Coaches save 17-year-old baseball player’s life with CPR after he collapsed during practice

By Peyton Headlee

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    KANSAS CITY, Missouri (KMBC) — A Blue Valley High School junior is headed back to class Wednesday and thankful to be alive. Just two weeks ago he collapsed at baseball practice from cardiac arrest.

Seventeen-year-old Davis Dwight was at Mac N Seitz for hitting practice with Coach Nikolaus Crouch.

“It’s an incident that keeps me up at night at times. It’s an incident that fills my mind and my heart,” Crouch said. “I was having a typical conversation with a 17-year-old kid about a situation that happened earlier with him – he broke his wood bat — and then two minutes into the conversation he just passed out.”

Crouch yelled for help and called 911. Coach and former Royals catcher Mike Macfarlane came running. They said Dwight was not breathing.

“I started compressions right away. Still couldn’t feel a pulse. I was scared, praying, hollering — get help,” Macfarlane said. “Things got real serious when he started turning blue, gasping at times for air, but still no pulse, no reactions, no anything.”

The coaches remembered their CPR training and sprung into action while they waited for help to arrive. They gave Dwight CPR for almost 15 minutes.

“It happened in the blink of an eye, but it felt like an eternity,” Crouch said. “What we did together to team up – we just kind of took it together, controlled it, did what we knew was best and we just kind of kept going for him.”

“Other than seeing my children born, it was probably the most emotional day I’ve ever had,” Macfarlane said.

Dwight was in the hospital for nearly a week, most of the days spent in the cardiac ICU. Doctors are still doing tests to try and figure out what made his heart stop. For now, he is wearing an external defibrillator.

His mother, Ashley Dwight, has called his coaches heroes.

“I never wanted myself to be a hero, to be honest with you, that’s not why I do things, that’s not why I jumped at the opportunity to save Davis’ life,” Crouch said. “To be able to help a human, to be able to bring him back and now he is here and he’s going to be coming in and being with his teammates and us and making us laugh and smile — it makes your heart definitely smile big.”

“I got to believe there’s a lot of good people out there that would have done the same exact thing,” Macfarlane said. “It’s nothing that you ever asked for or wished for. But I’m just thankful that it worked out because he’s a good young man and has his whole life ahead of him.”

Now, his coaches and his family are encouraging others to get CPR certified. You can take classes through the Red Cross.

Dwight is taking some time off baseball while he recovers, and doctors run more tests. His mom said he hopes to get back to practice as soon as possible.

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