High school athletes across the Carolinas receive free health exams

Over the weekend, highschool athletes from everywhere in the Carolinas crossed one thing vital off their sports activities prep checklists: full well being exams — without spending a dime.

On the fifteenth annual Coronary heart of a Champion Day, Atrium Well being hosted greater than 1,000 college students from colleges between North and South Carolina at Financial institution of America Stadium. 

The day-long occasion supplied free normal sports activities screenings, musculoskeletal checks and imaginative and prescient examinations for student-athletes in an try to stop accidents. 

Not like typical athletic screenings, Coronary heart of a Champion Day additionally included electrocardiograms –a noninvasive screening of the guts to examine for various coronary heart circumstances — to detect genetic coronary heart abnormalities that would result in sudden cardiac arrest, a uncommon however catastrophic occasion, throughout competitors.

Why it issues: In March 2023, a 17-year-old highschool cheerleader from Sanford, N.C. went into cardiac arrest at a contest, and in February 2023, an eighth grader went into cardiac arrest at a basketball recreation in South Carolina.

Carolina Panthers gamers, together with present huge receiver Terrance Marshall, Jr. and former huge receiver Kenneth Moore, Jr., additionally got here out to assist the occasion and work together with college students.

“Having this chance to see the place you might be [health-wise] is vital,” Moore mentioned on the occasion. He additionally talked about that understanding one’s well being standing is vital, particularly for athletes of coloration, noting undiagnosed hypertension as a “silent killer” within the Black group. 

Since its starting in 2008, this system has screened 1000’s of scholars at greater than 90 colleges throughout the Carolinas for quite a lot of causes, like not having a major care doctor or missing insurance coverage and even missed appointments or deadline crunches. 

Some college students informed QCity Metro they attended as a result of “it was free,” like D’omarion Smalls, a rising senior and soccer participant at Cox Mill Excessive Faculty in Harmony, N.C.  

Whereas others, like Jordan Tolbert, had a extra well timed cause to attend the free screening. 

“I used to be late on my bodily,” Tolbert mentioned. “I wouldn’t have been capable of play.” 

Tolbert, a rising freshman at Nation Ford Excessive Faculty in Fort Mill, S.C., mentioned having the ability to cheer is an important a part of her first 12 months in highschool. She went on to say that she would have felt “overlooked” of a part of the highschool expertise if unable to be a part of the game.

Due to the screening, teenagers like Tolbert and Smalls will proceed their student-athlete careers this 12 months.