KLEIN -- The Klein High School wrestling team was going through a regular workout in early January when something strange happened to Will Esparza.

He was only 16 -- a sophomore in high school — and he was having a heart attack.

Teens and pre-teens: They’re generally thought of as the healthiest people alive, but these young people seem more susceptible than ever to heart attacks

In the span of one week back in January, two girl basketball players in the Houston died  of sudden cardiac arrest.  A few days later, Esparza suffered his attack. He likes to say he was blessed, but he’ll never compete in sports again.

“For the first two days, I don’t know if I’ve ever cried that much,” Esparza said.

If you ask a doctor, like Memorial Hermann Hospital cardiologist John Higgins, he’ll tell you heart attacks kill at least 10 students a year in Texas, but the actual number is probably double that.

One of every 500 people has an enlarged heart, which means in a high school with 3,000 students, at least six have a pre-existing heart condition that could be deadly. 

AP

And when young people have heart attacks, the odds are against them.

Higgins is raising money for a pilot heart screening program that would provide students with an electrocardiogram and an echocardiogram — tests that will discover the hidden heart defects normal school physicals never find.

“We’re looking for a needle in a haystack, but that’s what we have to do,” Dr. Higgins said.

Heart screenings are one thing, but for the kids who don’t get tested there’s one last line of defense.

Laura Friend’s daughter Sarah was playing at a water park when she died of a heart attack, even though a defibrillator was just a short distance away. Nobody at the scene knew how to use it.

“It’s important these AED’s be used,” Friend said. “Kids die in the first five minutes, and an ambulance can’t get there that fast.”

Texas law now requires automatic external defibrillators in every school, but the state said more than half the schools in Texas still don’t have them.

As for Ezparza, he’s making plans for a future that doesn’t include competitive athletics.

“Checking out acting and film, and developing a Web site,” he said.

But his buddies still can hardly believe what happened to him.

“They’re like, ‘man we can’t believe you almost died,’” Esparza said.

And Esparza’s mother wants you to know something: that it’s very important to screen your children for heart defects.

“I just wonder how many other kids are out there that don’t know it,” Rosemary Esparza said. Working out like will and someday they won’t make it. They could be driving or anything, and I think if we can prevent it we should do everything can to do that.”