SYRACUSE, Utah — The Syracuse High School football team is filled with athletic and energetic teens, so the practice field is the perfect place to let off some of that steam.
Declan Harper is one of the many players on the team who loves the atmosphere.
“I just like the contact in it. The intensity,” Harper said.
Harper is only a sophomore and has been working on his skills as a defensive back since the season started. That was until one month ago.
“We were finishing up an offensive drill and then all a sudden we had some of the football players yelling for some of the coaches to come over,” sophomore head coach Randy Hicks said. "That’s when we saw one of our players laying on the ground, and there wasn’t any movement at all, so we all understood something was not normal."
Time stood still for nearly seven minutes.
“You know, you got fight or flight and you just respond the very best way you know how,” offensive coach Coy Bowman added. "We all started looking at each other and seeing he was not really responding. We said, 'We've got to do something here,' nd we started CPR."
Harper went into cardiac arrest on the football field. His coaches did CPR and mouth-to-mouth to try and save his life as they waited for emergency services to arrive.
“I’d say there was a point that we weren’t sure that we were going to get him back,” linebacker coach Logan Donaldson said. "It was really scary because he was not responding to anything that we were trying to do... Not until the police came up and we were still doing CPR, not until the AED came into play, that was what really brought him back."
While he was rushed to a nearby hospital with a faint heartbeat, they wished that AED had come into play seven minutes sooner.
“I learned that one of the AEDs was locked behind a closed door that not a lot of coaches had access to,” Syracuse High School Principal Brad Chapple said.
Untouched inside the field's press box, coaches used everything they could to break the glass, but nothing could get them inside.
“We determined immediately that we needed to move those AEDs in places where more access is available,” Chapple said. "By the end of that week, literally the next day after this happened, the Davis School District sent somebody out and they removed that from the press box and moved it to a place where everybody has access.”
Chapple said Harper's near death-experience sparked a change in the school and the district, and Harper’s family is hoping to spread awareness to other schools as well.
Harper's sister, Ashlyn McIntosh, said the support they’ve received over the past few weeks have been amazing.
“This was a life-or-death circumstance, and the cardiologist told us, out of all the times that this happens a year, one or two people survive because they don’t have that AED or the lifesaving skills to help them. It could’ve taken a different turn for him. So having that accessible will be that extra insurance that another person's life could be saved,” McIntosh said.
After a five-day stay in Primary Children’s Hospital, Harper was diagnosed with Long QT Syndrome, a rare genetic heart condition. His family said they also found that his heart wasn't getting enough oxygen, and they still don’t know why.
While they wait for more answers, Harper is already back on the sidelines.
“It’s amazing to see him walking around. He was at practice the following week, which was just amazing to have him there. He’s a very resilient young man,” Hicks said.
Although he still has a lot of homework to catch up on, Harper said he’s happy to get back to normal.
“It’s just, there's no words to describe it,” McIntosh said. "Because it could’ve been a very different outcome. For it to be the outcome that it was is just so rare and incredible in and of itself."
