HUDSONVILLE, Mich. — Monday, Feb. 12 started as a typical basketball practice for the Unity Christian High School boys basketball team. The Crusaders did some conditioning, shooting drills, and a scrimmage.
But after practice ended, the team stuck around for a special presentation given by the American Heart Association. The boys were about to learn hands-only CPR, in honor of their teammate Jake Chapman.
Back in September, Jake was knocked out in a football game against Coopersville.
"I just remember sitting up, seeing people all around me. That's about as much as I remember. And then I heard the trainer say I passed out or hit my head and was unconscious. Then they put me on the board, brought me in the ambulance, and sent me to hospital just for precautionary stuff," Jake said.
Jake took a few days off from school. The following week when he returned, he asked his parents if he could stay late for an after-school event. In what ended up being a critical decision, his parents urged him to come home and rest instead.
"Jake and his brother were eating in our kitchen at the counter. I was kind of sitting off to the side in a different room nearby. And I heard this kind of gurgling, sucking air noise. And I looked over and I saw Jake. His eyes were kind of rolled back a little bit, and he was very contorted," said Jake's father, Chad.
"That's when I yelled out 'JAKE!' and he didn't respond. And then I yelled it out the second time, louder, and he didn't respond. That's when I knew that something was not right and something needs to be done."
Chad noticed that Jake wasn't breathing. He checked for a pulse and couldn't find one. He began chest compressions while Jake's mom Rachel called 911. She says first responders were there in about three and a half minutes.
"Just two young guys. I think one had been on three months and [the other] nine months only, on the force. They were the ones that came in and saved Jake's life. They had the AED and they knew what to do," Rachel said.
At first, it didn't look good.
"The first thing that they said was 'No pulse,' and it was just like the world caving in on you in a matter of seconds. And then once they got done with the AED, shocked him twice, I remember them saying 'We have a pulse.' It was just probably the best thing that I've ever heard in my life," Chad said.
Jake spent the next week at the hospital in a medically-induced coma. Doctors were not able to find a correlation between the concussion Jake went through and the cardiac arrest the following week.
"We were nervous, but we had a lot of hope. I just remember I said 'It's Mom, if you can hear me, squeeze my hand.' When he squeezed my hand, it was like, okay, he's in there. I knew that he was there, and I could really tell them to keep fighting," Rachel said.
"It was kind of a blur for us. Those days were filled with an incredible amount of medical care. Someone was in the room with him all the time monitoring. We can't believe the amount of equipment that he had available to really keep him alive."
When Jake woke up, he said the whole thing felt like a dream. On the road to recovery, he did physical therapy as well as occupational and speech therapy. Then in January, Jake got the green light to return to practice, just three months after his heart stopped.
"It felt really good just to finally be able to be a part of practice, instead of sitting out and watching and kind of just going through the motions. It felt good to be a part of the team and practice again," Jake said.
As the weeks continued Jake got some limited playing time in games.
"I'm not in the starting lineup yet. I'm still kind of just easing my way in. Normally I sub in pretty decently but yeah, I'm playing. I would say I'm going in for two or three or four minutes, and then coming out for the rest of the quarter," he said.
"It feels really good to be part of that. I mean, there's nothing I could ask for more. That was what I was dreaming of when everything happened, just to be out on that court, again. Return to doing what I love."
Jake has his life back because he was in the right place, at the right time, with the right person who knew how to do CPR.
"Obviously, God saved my life, and He had a plan for me. My dad jumped in and he also saved my life. God has a plan for me, and He has a plan for everyone else," Jake said.
Jake hopes part of the plan will be using his story to encourage other people to learn CPR. That mission started with his teammates at practice.
"It's truly a team. This is something that they are experiencing together, and we're so thankful. The fact that they would stay late after practice and learn CPR because they know that that life-saving ability is in their hands, literally, and they wanted to know in it, it means everything to us," Rachel said.
If you'd like to learn hands-only CPR, there are a number of ways to do that. The American Heart Association has a number of classes available on their website. But they also have an instructional YouTube video available to show you how it's done. That video is free and only takes 60 seconds to watch.
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