By Peter Mikhael
Athletic trainer Maria Rosanelli grabbed the automated defibrillator bag sitting on the desk across the office door and ran to the football field. She stopped near the 30-yard line where a student lay faced down, turned him over and told coaches Rushing and Livingstone to call 911.
“At first, it was like ‘Is this really happening?’” Rosanelli said. “I knew it was a scary situation, but I immediately just clicked and I know I told myself ‘all right, it’s go time, and you’ve got to get this person to respond,’ and I just went into go mode, like ‘just do it.’”
After cutting his shirt off and doing CPR and chest compressions, Rosanelli could not find a pulse. She attached the defibrillator to the unconscious player, assessed his condition and shocked him. In less than 10 minutes, sophomore Jesus Banegas’ breathing improved.
“After that, I don’t think it was longer than 10 minutes – the whole scenario – way less than that,” Rosanelli said. “When you’re doing something like that, you don’t realize the time. So finally, he started to move, and that was great, and then the paramedics came.”
The Emergency Medical Service personnel arrived as Rosanelli was checking Banegas’ reflexes. The paramedics took him to Medical City where Rosanelli and the coaches checked up on him later that Monday night.
“He looked awesome,” Rosanelli said. “And he’s back here in school, which is awesome – even better.”
At the hospital, doctors told Banegas that he likely had an asthma attack while running the daily practice drills. The events following the attack remain hazy in his mind.
“I just remember being on the last trail, but I don’t remember finishing it,” Banegas said. “I was in coach Rushing’s drill, and all the sudden everything turns dark. I was like asleep. Then I woke up in the hospital my mother on my right side, coach Chandler and my brother on my left side. I just woke up, and I didn’t know what to say. I remember saying ‘what happened? What happened?’”
The doctors told Banegas he can’t play football for a month, after which they will run additional tests to determine whether or not he can return. In the meantime, Banegas said he insists on being at practice.
“I’m trying to get better to come back to football,” Banegas said. “In the morning, I’m there. I still come at seven to get the feeling that I’m still going to practice, but I don’t play.”
Hoping his test results will allow him to play varsity football next year, Banegas said he has already made changes toward a healthier lifestyle.
“They told me to eat better, so that’s totally what I’m going to do, to come back,” Banegas said. “I already started. I’m not eating any fast food, no chips – nothing. I want to lose weight, to feel better out there on the football field.”
The incident affected several of the athletic training students, football players and coaches who witnessed it.
“It’s traumatic for anyone,” Rosanelli said. “I know my students were upset about it. I made sure they were okay. I don’t think any of the coaches had seen that, so the coaches kept telling me all day ‘you did awesome,’ so that’s really comforting to hear and build your self-confidence even more. And I know some of the other football players that were out there – we made sure the coaches talked to them and made sure everybody was ok.”
As a student at Northeastern State University, and a graduate student at Missouri State University, Rosanelli studied and worked as an athletic trainer. After working at Austin College in Sherman, and The University of Texas at Dallas, Rosanelli heard of an opening in Richardson.
“Here, our patient-load is huge,” Rosanelli said. “We see everybody all the time, and then I’m here to help every single sport, every single athlete. When you work at the college level, most of the time you’re set with a certain team. And you travel with them, and you have staff of three plus athletic trainers. Or when I was in grad school, there were five GAs (graduate assistants), and they had two staff athletic trainers, and we all had a sport. Here, you see a lot more things, and I had to start learning about the adolescent injuries here that are more common than we’d never seen at the college level.”
Over the years, she has dealt with several emergency situations, but they never reached the same critical condition. At Austin College, Rosanelli called an ambulance for a soccer player that passed out during a game. Two years ago, she helped save the life of a baseball player who was having a seizure and who had trouble breathing due to an obstructed airway.
“I’ve been close to using the AD and doing CPR on some athletes, but it had never gotten to that point,” Rosanelli said. “I know it happened in the parking lot a couple of years ago with some of the baseball players. That was close, that would’ve been another incident. The thing is, you never know when you’re going to have to do it. We’re here to take care of all the athletes and to do prevention and rehab for them, and we’re also here for those emergency situations – you never know when those are going to happen.”
Just like two years ago, praise for Rosanelli’s work poured in after the incident. This year, however, the Texas High School Coaches Association elected her Region III Trainer of the Year, and her name will be forwarded to the statewide competition.
“I’ve had a lot of support,” Rosanelli said. “A lot of my friends who are teachers here, my teacher friends – I was getting messages, emails and then text messages saying ‘awesome,’ and ‘I just heard the story and I’m speechless.’ So, that’s pretty cool. This is why we’re here. This is part of my job, unfortunately. These things happen.”
Banegas, who’s interested in the medical field, said he hasn’t spoken to Rosanelli since he came back to school but that he has always appreciated the athletic trainers.
“I would tell her that I’m very thankful – if she weren’t there I would’ve been in a completely different situation,” Banegas said. “In the hospital, I thought of how this changed my life, what would I do to get better – that I was given a second chance for a reason.”
As for Rosanelli, she’s already preparing for the future.
“I thought about a lot of stuff,” Rosanelli said. “When you do something, anything like this, you have an adrenaline rush. That was for three days. And later in the week, you kind of reflect and you’re like ‘wow that really happened,’ and you’re always grateful for the positive outcome. You don’t want to think about the other side of it. But the more you’ve had to talk about it, the more you think about it, and it’s like ‘ok, I’m ready to do my job. There are other things we have to do here too.’”