{"id":147930,"date":"2026-02-08T09:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T09:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/147930\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T09:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T09:14:11","slug":"ekg-to-be-required-for-florida-high-school-athletes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/147930\/","title":{"rendered":"EKG to be required for Florida high school athletes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014\u00a0A medical test will soon be required for all Florida high school student-athletes, thanks to new state legislation called the &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.flsenate.gov\/Session\/Bill\/2025\/01070\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Second Chance Act<\/a>&#8216;.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>What You Need To Know<\/p>\n<p>Evan Ernst, the Co-founder of the non-profit Who We Play For, said\u00a0they can detect 95% of the conditions that can cause cardiac arrest with the procedure\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>An electrocardiogram, also known as an ECG or EKG, is a non-invasive test that records the heart\u2019s electrical activity<br \/>\n<br \/>The legislation officially goes into effect for the 2026 school year on July 1<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mayoclinic.org\/tests-procedures\/ekg\/about\/pac-20384983\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">An electrocardiogram, also known as an ECG or EKG, is a non-invasive test that records the heart\u2019s electrical activity<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The test aims to prevent kids from going into cardiac arrest.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>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<p>\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\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to the non-profit, more than 70 students between the ages of 10 and 25\u00a0 got an ECG at the Galen College of Nursing in St. Petersburg on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>This includes 16-year-old Hadley Stenberg.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>She attends school in Tampa, and while she\u2019s never gotten this test before, she wasn\u2019t worried and wants others to feel comfortable.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\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\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The procedure tests for multiple conditions that 1-300 kids may have.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Evan lost one of his childhood friends on the soccer field because of cardiac arrest.<\/p>\n<p>With the Florida legislature passing the act in 2025, he said this will prevent other kids from having to go through the same thing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\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\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The legislation officially goes into effect for the 2026 school year on July 1.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014\u00a0A medical test will soon be required for all Florida high school student-athletes, thanks to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[113,28,30,29,1236,571,3745,4628,115,139,135,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-147930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-education","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-headlines","11":"tag-florida-news","12":"tag-florida-sports","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-high-school-sports","15":"tag-matt-lackritz","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-orlando","18":"tag-tampa","19":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}