Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo Praises 7 Health Edge Heart Check Program

EAST LANSING, Mich (WXYZ) - Tom Izzo knows all too well the pain of losing a student athlete to heart trouble.  Tragedy struck his summer camp in 2009, when a 14-year-old collapsed on the court in the middle of a game and died.

Izzo says, that was his "wake-up" call to the serious problem of hidden heart defects in student athletes.

During his incredible career, as Michigan State Head Basketball Coach, Izzo has basked in the glory of victory too many times to count. He is four- time National Coach Of The Year, six-time winner of the Big 10 Championship, six-time participant in The Final Four, and winner of the 2000 NCAA Division 1 Championship. Tom Izzo knows what winning's all about.

But Izzo also knows what it’s like to lose everything.

He learned that lesson painfully in June 2009, when 14-year old Dorian Dawkins, a Saginaw High School basketball star, died at coach Izzo’s summer basketball camp.

It happened right in the middle of the game, while the boy was shooting a free throw. Izzo says, ”All of the sudden, towards the end of the game, he just goes right down on the court and he’s not getting up. I spent the next 3 hours with his family at the hospital and it was truly one of the sadder moments I’ve ever been associated with.“

This year Izzo watched on television as many of us did, as two more Michigan high school athletes, Wes Leonard of Fennville and Peter Catcho of West Bloomfield, died within 2 weeks of each other.

That’s why Coach Izzo, one of the most successful coaches in college basketball today, is joining Channel 7 and Beaumont Hospitals in pushing parents to take their high school athletes to the 7 Health Edge Heart Check. It's a program created by myself and the top heart doctors at Beaumont in which teenage athletes are put through a whole series of in-depth heart tests designed to find hidden heart defects, tests that could cost up to a thousand dollars or more, absolutely free.

Izzo says, ”Just to think of your station and Beaumont Hospitals doing this several times a year, and all the time and money and planning that you pump into this thing, and not to take advantage of this if you’re a parent, then you are negligent as a parent, you’re not getting the job done.”

Just as he is on the court, Tom Izzo will tell you he is incredibly passionate about the need for parents to get their student athletes tested, because, as he puts it, it’s a matter of life and death and this is one game you can’t afford to lose.

Yes, Tom Izzo has won about every collegiate trophy you can win, but if he could he says he would give the 7 Health Edge Heart Check an award for saving the lives of innocent, young, athletes.

Action News and Beaumont hospital have spent the past 5 years testing the hearts of 5,600 student athletes.  Our heart check program found 500 kids with heart problems. Thiry four of them had trouble so serious that had to quit sports immediately, and 4 of them had problems so severe they could have died.

Channel 7 is the only TV station in the country involved in such a program, and Izzo is encouraging parents of student athletes to take advantage of it to protect their children's hearts.

7 HEALTH EDGE HEART CHECK EVENT

A heart check event set for Milford high school this weekend is now full. So organizers added another date and location.

The next "Health Edge Heart Check" event is set for September 24th at Oakland University. You can register by calling: (800) 633-7377.  There are 1,000 spots available and you can expect them to go fast.