The Athletic Training Program at Alamogordo High School is an award winning and important program. Athletic trainers play a key role in success.
One trainer in the New Mexico schools truly stands puttinf his skills to the test this year with a life saving performance. The trainer is from Volcano Vista High School.
As the New Mexico Athletics Association tells us that you never know when emergency situations will hit, but being prepared can save a precious life. That’s what happened on a Saturday in October.
Volcano Vista High School was scheduled to host Farmington in a Junior Varsity Girls Soccer match. While setting up the field for the match, Volcano Vista athletic trainer Enrique Ochoa was alerted to something he hadn’t experienced before. “I was setting up coolers and kits, getting ready for the game, and I heard one of the coaches yell, ‘Coach! Coach!,’; it was a different kind of tone,” Ochoa described. “I turned around and saw Coach Cuadra on the ground.”
Volcano Vista assistant coach John Alan Cuadra had collapsed. That’s when Ochoa sprung into action. “I immediately grabbed my kit, with the AED emergency response equipment,” Ochoa recalled. An Automated External Defibrillator (AED) is a portable device that can be used to treat a person whose heart has suddenly stopped working. “I saw his face and he was unresponsive,” said Ochoa. “I yelled, ‘Someone call 911!’, and did what I was taught to do.” Ochoa says Cuadra suffered a cardiac emergency. He shocked Cuadra once with the AED and administered a few cycles of CPR to resuscitate him before medical help arrived.