Newmarket hockey team inspires the community

August 13, 2020 · 0 Comments

Grade 12 student Raychel Gillis was scorekeeping her dad’s hockey game last year when one of the fathers in contention collapsed on the ice.

She sprung out from her scorekeeping box and scurried over to the man down. Her CPR training was enough to embolden Gillis to attempt to save the man’s life.

The one key factor you have to remember about someone in cardiac arrest is time. For every minute that passes, the chances of survival decrease by 10 per cent. In essence, there’s ten-minute window.

Everyone in the rink that day saw something. Call it a miracle or excellent teaching, whichever one it is, Gillis saved the man’s life.

Gillis, has earned plenty of praise from her family and friends and is celebrated within the community. She has also inspired a group of young women to promote CPR training.

The Central York Girls Hockey Association (CYGHA) Orange Crush Peewee hockey the discovered Chevy Good Deeds program. By joining Good Deeds, the hockey team was required to contribute something positive to the community.

Inspired by Gillis’ courageous effort, the girls, along with their manager, Trish Murphy, wanted to increase the awareness and the importance of CPR training. The team raised over $10,000; enough money to install SaveStations.

“They used our crowd funding platform,” says Deb Hennig, President of SaveStation. “SaveStation [is an] open source crowd funding platform, to help people who want to do similar things and they [used the platform to] spread it out to their network of people and through that network, they were able to raise more than $10,000.”

Hennig and Murphy have known each other for years and Murphy encouraged this initiative.

The girls’ hockey team began teaching others how to perform CPR and also with the crowd funding platform encouraged the construction of SaveStations in the community.

This month, the hockey team unveiled the first outdoor 24/7 SaveStation AED (Automated External Defibrillator) Tower at the Newmarket’s Riverwalk Commons, which was purchased with the funds raised by the team.

This device can teach people how to perform CPR if they have never been educated to do so and instructs a user how to use the defibrillator.

“You open it. You grab the defibrillator. We really encourage it, there’s a QR code that we actually placed at the front of these SaveStations. You can take your phone now, open up your camera app, hold it over there and it opens up a video, a two-minute video on how to use that defibrillator that’s located inside that SaveStation, and it also shows somebody how to use CPR,” said Hennig.

The goal is to create mass awareness, understanding and facilitate access to this item to empower people for use in an emergency.

If you’re ever in an emergency and someone is unconscious, phone 9-1-1 immediately. The dispatcher on the other line is able to guide you to the nearest SaveStation to be used if the information is available.

On this SaveStation, all the names of the girls on the hockey team will be emblazoned on the tower.

“I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all the members of the CYGHA Orange Crush Hockey team for their commitment to saving lives and for this generous donation that will make Newmarket safer,” said Newmarket Mayor John Taylor.

“The girls hope this will inspire other businesses to get involved and help sponsor the placement of other outdoor SaveStations, in high traffic areas, throughout our community,” added Murphy.

Hennig says she can see SaveStations becoming a prominent feature in communities. She encourages communities to look into these products that you can’t miss by day and especially when the towers are illuminated by night.

Hennig added a SaveStation will be introduced in Aurora soon and will reveal who contributed to its development.

By Robert Belardi