Stats don’t tell story of Muskegon Clippers player and cardiac-arrest survivor: ‘Statistically, I shouldn’t be here’

Stats don’t tell story of Muskegon Clippers player and cardiac-arrest survivor: ‘Statistically, I shouldn’t be here’

Muskegon Clippers baseball player remembers how CPR saved his life

MUSKEGON, MI – It’s been a challenging summer baseball season for Aaron Hurd with the Muskegon Clippers.

However, the 23-year-old Texas native is reminded every day that life is about the journey, not the destination. He and others around him were issued a stark reminder five years ago. Hurd could have lost his life when he suffered sudden cardiac arrest while sitting in class at Kansas Wesleyan University.

“I don’t pay attention to statistics too much,” said Hurd, who is in the Clippers lineup every other day and hitting .175 as a platooning outfielder for the Great Lakes Summer Collegiate Baseball League team. “Statistically, I shouldn’t be here, you know what I mean.”

Hurd could have become another sad stat about a seemingly healthy young athlete succumbing to heart-related sudden death. Instead, a Kansas Wesleyan baseball teammate, who happened to become CPR-certified the night before, was seated next to him in class and helped save his life.

Hurd still does not remember much about that Dec. 6, 2016 day, when fellow Kansas Wesleyan outfielder Rex Campbell immediately sprung into action and administered CPR until paramedics arrived minutes after Hurd collapsed in class.

Big and strong at 6-foot-2, 220 pounds, Hurd had an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) embedded in his chest. If his heart ever does fail again or get into a dangerous rhythm, the ICD will shock him internally.

The way Hurd describes his cardiac episode, the electrical circuit current in his heart kind of got out of beat and never corrected itself.

“It was a real shock to me, especially someone as healthy as he was and as close to me, especially in that class as he was; I had never experienced anything like that in my life,” said Campbell, who was an emergency management major at the time and now works in construction in Boise, Idaho.

“I learned never to take anything for granted because you never know what can happen. You never know when it could be something in that instance like that and maybe someone won’t be there.”

Muskegon Clippers baseball player Aaron Hurd takes part in practice at Marsh Field in Muskegon on Wednesday, June 9, 2021. In 2016, Hurd had a sudden cardiac arrest episode and collapsed in class as a student athlete at Kansas Wesleyan University. A baseball teammate Rex Campbell administered CPR to help save his life. (Cory Morse | MLive.com)

‘IT WAS JUST REACTION’

As Campbell remembers, Hurd had beaten him to the Kansas Wesleyan business building the morning of the incident for their 8 a.m. macroeconomics class. Hurd sent Campbell a text about five minutes prior to class, asking if he was on his way. Hurd stood outside and waited for Campbell to arrive, then they walked into the room together and sat next to each other in the back row.

They were watching a video when Campbell noticed Hurd start to fidget. Campbell recalls Hurd trying to get up from his chair, when he got about halfway up, turned away from Campbell and collapsed.

Initially, Campbell thought that Hurd might have been suffering a seizure, so he moved Hurd to his side as taught in CPR. Hurd stopped moving, and when Campbell checked for breath and a pulse, neither were there. Somebody in the class yelled, “Does anyone know CPR?”

Campbell was already in the process of administering it. While he was doing chest compressions on Hurd, their professor was on the phone with 9-1-1 dispatch. Campbell said there was no pulse and no lung activity.

One other student in class also knew CPR, so she stayed in the room with them, but the other students left. Campbell said that once paramedics arrived and tended to Hurd, Kansas Wesleyan faculty members stayed with Campbell to make sure he was OK amid the traumatic experience involving his teammate and friend.

“I’d never seen someone collapse, I’d never seen someone go into cardiac arrest, let alone have to perform chest compressions on someone doing it, especially someone I know,” Campbell said. “So, honestly, at the time, it was just reaction – what happened was reaction, it was instinct. I was lucky that I was certified the night before.”

In honor of Hurd and Campbell’s heroic efforts, Kansas Wesleyan created the Campbell/Hurd Emergency Management Award, which is presented at the end of each school year.

Hurd is eternally grateful to Campbell, and he called Campbell’s presence and actions that day “a miraculous situation.”

In the hospital, Hurd was placed in a medically induced coma so that doctors could lower his body temperature and preserve brain and bodily function.

“It’s very scary. Obviously, I felt healthy and then wake up in the hospital a few weeks later and have no idea what’s going on,” Hurd recalled.

Muskegon Clippers baseball player Aaron Hurd takes part in practice at Marsh Field in Muskegon on Wednesday, June 9, 2021. In 2016, Hurd had a sudden cardiac arrest episode and collapsed in class as a student athlete at Kansas Wesleyan University. A baseball teammate Rex Campbell administered CPR to help save his life. (Cory Morse | MLive.com)

HURD’S ROAD TO MUSKEGON

Hurd spent four years at Kansas Wesleyan, an NAIA program in Salina, Kan. In 32 games during the 2018 season, he batted .218. He injured his hamstring as a junior with the Coyotes in 2019, and in seven games he hit .263. He was able to get a redshirt season.

Hurd was looking for a fresh start, so he transferred to Lyon College, another NAIA school located in Batesville, Ark. He batted .277 in 16 games in 2020 before the coronavirus pandemic put a halt to the season.

Last summer, the Muskegon Clippers’ summer season was canceled because of the pandemic. Clippers general manager/pitching coach Steve Cutter took a position as field manager of the Great Lakes Resorters, one of two new teams created to compete against the then-reigning Northwoods League champion Traverse City Pit Spitters in a northern Lower Peninsula pod.

Hurd, a native of Rockwall, Texas, located about 30 minutes northeast of Dallas, was looking for a place to play last summer when he connected with Cutter. In 13 games with the Resorters, Hurd hit .267.

The Cutter-Hurd connection resulted in Hurd coming to Muskegon when Cutter returned to the organization this season.

This year has been a struggle for Hurd on the baseball field. At Lyon, he batted just .115 in 16 games. With the up-and-down Clippers (17-18-1), he’s 10-for-57 at the plate with one double, one triple, one home run and five RBIs in 20 games played.

Despite any frustrations, Hurd remains focused on the process and trusts that things will turn around. He intends on returning to Lyon College in the fall for his senior year. He said he feels good physically.

“The best part of Aaron’s story is not necessarily what happened to him, but how he responded to it and what he’s gone through from that point forward,” Cutter said. “A genuine young man who’s really determined to get past that and not have that be his story.

“He’s got a great frame, he’s got a really good arm, he can run. He just needed somebody to kind of put an arm around him and help him a little bit and that’s what we did up there (in Traverse City). In the fall. I reached back out and I said, ‘Hey, I don’t know where I’m going to be at, but I do know that there’s this great spot in Muskegon and I know there’s great coaches here that will help you.’”

IT’S A JOURNEY, NOT A DESTINATION

Hurd estimates he has not been to his Texas home in seven months. He was able to recently see his parents, Robert and Tamara, who visited Muskegon for a weekend. He said he didn’t realize how much good that visit would do for him.

This summer, Hurd is staying with a first-time host family in Spring Lake: Kirk and Sasha Gorbach, their two young sons and baby daughter. Kirk Gorbach said Hurd has been polite and respectful in their home, and that their sons have become big fans. When Hurd hit his home run this summer with the Clippers, he gave the ball to the Gorbachs’ 9-year-old son and it’s sitting in a case in the youngster’s bedroom.

Kirk Gorbach said Hurd is committed to baseball’s daily grind, regardless of any successes and failures. Gorbach was thrilled to be on hand Friday night at Marsh Field when Hurd had a big night at the plate in the Clippers’ 8-2 victory over the Michigan Monarchs. He was 2-for-3 with a bases-clearing triple in a five-run eighth inning for the hosts.

Prior to Friday, Hurd had only one hit in his seven previous games.

“To be having the game he had last night, which we were at, it was phenomenal. I was cheering and jumping up and down in the stands and I haven’t done that at a baseball game in I don’t even know how long. It was great,” Gorbach said about the liner hit toward center field.

Hurd tries to remember that he’s always growing, always learning.

Campbell calls Hurd “an awesome human” and that the only thing he saw change after the cardiac episode was his perspective on life.

Hurd said he’s been told by many people that they’re inspired by his story. He’s grateful for and humbled by those words, but he said he wants people to be inspired by their own stories.

“It really does not take negative or extraordinary circumstances to change or to have a great perspective. It really does make life more enjoyable. I’ve been through a lot in my relatively short life, extraordinary circumstances, but it does not take that to change or to inspire you or fall in love with life again,” Hurd said.

“I read something a while ago that life doesn’t have to be one long novel, one long build-up to a final destination or final goal. Your whole life can be just a book of short poems and every day just taking the day (as it comes). It’s not all bad as it seems if you get late in a season and you’re not where you (want to be).”