School hosts record-breaking heart screening event

Lake Neil

Students getting their hearts checked from the local firemen.

With the collaboration of students, staff, administration and volunteers, the entire school community came together on January 8 to host a EKG Youth Heart Screening event, providing free heart screenings and CPR training to BHS students. 

After the loss of senior Ingrid Pharris in the summer of 2024 due to a heart arrhythmia event, students and administration sought to honor Pharris’s life and memory at BHS. The event was organized through the Nick of Time Foundation, a non-profit that works to educate about Sudden Cardiac Arrest in young athletes. 

“When, over the summer, we tragically lost a student due to a heart arrhythmia event, it was one of the first things I thought of in terms of taking action as a school community,” Principal Abby Hunt said. “A close friend of Ingrid’s reached out to me within days with the same idea, which I thought was pretty incredible.”

That close friend, senior Kaia Hofsass, along with seniors Eli Pitcock and Bianca Maurer, sought to host this event to recognize and honor Phariss’s life and prevent other heart issues from going unnoticed in the community.

“I want to make sure that doesn’t happen to anyone else, and I want to honor her memory,” Hofsass said. “It was also really cool to see that we could have a hand in something that involved so many people.”

With sudden cardiac arrest being the leading cause of death for active teenagers in America, Hunt emphasized the importance of student health and wellbeing. 

“As principal, when I think about caring for the school community and making sure that students are safe, there’s a range of factors involved in student safety and care, and this is one of those,” Hunt said.

Pitcock similarly noted how making heart screenings accessible for students, both in cost and location, was a main goal behind organizing the event. 

“It’s not a common thing done in physicals, or yearly checkups at the doctor,” Pitcock said. “When I heard about this I thought it was awesome, because it’s a way to get this out to a big group of people for completely free, and I want to try to make that happen in more places.”

As Hofsass shared, although they were initially only allowed to register 500 individuals for a heart screening, 540 people signed up within a few weeks of even announcing the event on social media. As a result, the Nick of Time Foundation recruited more volunteers to accommodate for the high registration numbers, and ultimately 680 students were screened in a single day, breaking the record for the Nick of Time Foundation by around 120 students. 

“I think the convenience of it being at school can lead a lot more people to sign up than would just want to go to their doctor for it,” Hofsass said. “I think it made people a little bit more comfortable that it was something that they and their friends all could be signed up for. It wasn’t as isolating.”

Since the Nick of Time Foundation only does one heart screening per month during the school year, Hunt said that the school will likely be on a four-year rotation with the foundation. However, the administration is hoping for the school to host more events like this in the future. 

“With the right partnerships and the right student interest, the Ballard administration wants to support more events of this type and scale as a way of supporting our school community beyond the classroom,” Hunt said.