{"id":62337,"date":"2026-02-07T23:09:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T04:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=62337"},"modified":"2026-02-07T23:09:31","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T04:09:31","slug":"medical-procedure-to-be-required-for-florida-high-school-athletes-starting-in-july","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2026\/02\/07\/medical-procedure-to-be-required-for-florida-high-school-athletes-starting-in-july\/","title":{"rendered":"Medical procedure to be required for Florida high school athletes starting in July"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A medical test will soon be required for all Florida high school student-athletes, thanks to new state legislation called the ‘Second Chance Act<\/a>‘. <\/p>\n\n\n

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An electrocardiogram, also known as an ECG or EKG, is a non-invasive test that records the heart\u2019s electrical activity<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The test aims to prevent kids from going into cardiac arrest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evan Ernst, the co-founder of the non-profit Who We Play For, said they can detect 95% of the conditions that can cause cardiac arrest with the procedure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s 23,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests every single year in America,\u201d he said. \u201cFor the kids who have underlying heart conditions, this will catch most.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to the non-profit, more than 70 students between the ages of 10 and 25  got an ECG at the Galen College of Nursing in St. Petersburg on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This includes 16-year-old Hadley Stenberg. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She attends school in Tampa, and while she\u2019s never gotten this test before, she wasn\u2019t worried and wants others to feel comfortable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s cool to see what your heart is doing,\u201d said Stenberg. \u201cNo pain at all. It was quick and easy, maybe took two minutes for them to do everything.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The procedure tests for multiple conditions that 1-300 kids may have. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evan lost one of his childhood friends on the soccer field because of cardiac arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the Florida legislature passing the act in 2025, he said this will prevent other kids from having to go through the same thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis becoming the standard of care for Florida kids is absolutely massive,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the biggest accomplishments in children\u2019s health care in this country in decades.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The legislation officially goes into effect for the 2026 school year on July 1. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A medical test will soon be required for all Florida high school student-athletes, thanks to new state legislation called the ‘Second Chance Act‘.  An electrocardiogram, also known as an ECG… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"26","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNlwvMDJcL2ltYWdlcy0xLTIud2VicD9maXQ9MjUxJTJDMjAxJnNzbD0xIiwidHh0IjoiTWVkaWNhbCBwcm9jZWR1cmUgdG8gYmUgcmVxdWlyZWQgZm9yIEZsb3JpZGEgaGlnaCBzY2hvb2wgYXRobGV0ZXMgc3RhcnRpbmcgaW4gSnVseSIsInRlbXBsYXRlIjoiaGlnaHdheSIsImZvbnQiOiIiLCJibG9nX2lkIjoxNjMwNDA2NjF9.YiQkydUC3DAiWwCe_VTmaA99J293uJRcdzdt3mg1D48MQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":62338,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/images-1-2.webp","type":"image\/jpeg"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[13566],"class_list":["post-62337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-schools","tag-medical-procedure-to-be-required-for-florida-high-school-athletes-starting-in-july"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62337"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62339,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62337\/revisions\/62339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}