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Cause of Everson Guild's death still unknown

Posted at 7:50 AM, Jul 26, 2017
and last updated 2017-07-26 09:24:13-04

It came out of nowhere when Everson Guild lost consciousness during a voluntary Grand Ledge high school football workout.

"He was actually finishing a lift at that time and there was other boys that were around him spotting," explains Matt Bird, the football coach. "We always make sure that safety is our number one concern."

Bird quickly ran over to perform CPR. Meanwhile staff were trying to figure out why it was happening.

"They immediately went to the medical cards that we have or the emergency contact cards," Bird describes. "We had a phone call into mom and dad and then within that there's also any pre-medical conditions or anything that we would need to be aware of in case there was a food allergy or anything like that... and there was nothing."

Sports doctor Randy Pearson says it could've been anything that caused Guild to lose consciousness including exercise induced asthma, a heart condition or even an aneurysm.

That's why doctors look for those extreme conditions in yearly physicals.

"There's a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy that's a family related cause of sudden death and that's actually associated with a certain kind of heart murmur so that's one thing we would listen for in a physical exam," Pearson states.

But it's not easy. Some conditions can be hard to detect and that's why it's so important to get these physicals every year.

"Any kind of an abnormal heart rhythm, unless we happen to catch during the physical exam, we wouldn't be able to find," says Pearson. "If an individual has an asymptomatic aneurysm in their brain, we wouldn't be able to find that."