It’s not a stretch to say that playing sports helped a Wooster graduate save a man’s life this month.
On Aug. 12, Meredith Ebie-Freed, an intensive care nurse and 1998 Wooster graduate, administered CPR to a player who collapsed during a recreational coed soccer game in Sonoma County.
Her quick thinking probably saved the life of Mark Hays.
When Hays, 55, collapsed during a game against Ebie-Freed’s team, she first administered CPR, then used an automated external defibrillator to resuscitate him.
Hays had no pulse and stopped breathing as he went into cardiac arrest. Ebie-Freed got to Hays within seconds of his collapse.
As it happens, her team has several medical professionals on it. The goalkeeper, also a nurse, helped with CPR while another nurse teammate set about finding the AED device.
Thankfully, the soccer facility had two.
“That’s what really saved him, was having that AED and being able to get it there quickly,” Ebie-Freed told the RGJ. “It’s very user-friendly. I’m very familiar with it because we use something very similar in the hospital. Doing CPR is something we do frequently.”
She said after about a minute and a half of CPR, Hays started waking up and moving around.
Soccer a stress-reliever for Ebie-Freed — usually
Ebie-Freed spoke to Hays on Wednesday evening and said he is doing well. He has a surgically installed defibrillator in his chest.
While Ebie-Fried is well-versed in CPR, having administered it dozens of times, it has always been in a hospital ICU — never on a soccer pitch. Ebie-Freed, who is an intensive care unit nurse at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, said her job can be highly stressful.
She said the ICU is a stressful place most of the time anyway, and experiencing the past two years during the pandemic added to that stress.
“Soccer has given me a really great stress reliever, because work has been really hard,” she said. “It’s nice to have an outlet where we can do healthy things.”
Ebie-Freed usually skips the Friday rec league games because of her 5 am start at the hospital on Saturdays, but had opted to play the day Hays collapsed.
‘In the right place’
Ebie-Freed, a soccer player since the age of 5, played at Wooster, where she earned All-Region honors as a first-team forward. After receiving a soccer scholarship at Sonoma State in Rohnert Park, Calif., Ebie-Freed studied nursing there, graduating in 2002.
In addition to rec league play, Ebie-Freed also coaches the Empire Soccer Club U-12 team in Santa Rosa. Hays coaches the Healdsburg High varsity girls soccer team.
She says her new home is “like Reno. Sonoma County is a small county and it turns out we know a bunch of mutual people.”
“Soccer brought me to college and soccer has brought me to this opportunity to help Mark,” Ebie-Freed said. “If I didn’t continue to play, I definitely wouldn’t have been able to help him.”
She said playing sports has several benefits, teaching teamwork and leadership skills — in addition to letting her be in the right place at the right time.
“It’s a really great opportunity for coaching young girls and showing them all the things sports and athleticism can bring,” she said. “(Soccer) brought me to college and it brought me to meet some amazing people and to travel and the opportunity to be in the right place to help Mark.”
Ebie-Freed had a knee injury a few years ago and her doctor recommended she take up swimming instead of playing soccer, which can be hard on the joints, but she declined, saying she will play soccer as long as she is able.
Jim Krajewski covers high school and youth sports for the Reno Gazette Journal. Follow him on Twitter @RGJPreps. Support his work by subscribing to RGJ.com.