Fast-acting fans at Smithtown High School East soccer game come to aid of stricken ref

A quick response from parents, coaches and medical professionals may have saved the life of a referee who collapsed while officiating a girl's junior varsity soccer game at Smithtown High School East, schools officials said Thursday.

The referee, identified by East Islip High athletic director Stephen Restivo as Vito Cassara Jr., fell to the field after experiencing what school officials called an apparent cardiac event, face down in front of Smithtown's net early in the first half of a game Wednesday between Smithtown East and East Islip High School.

On Thursday, parents and school staff who rendered aid — a coach, an EMT, a former East Islip firefighter — recalled those harrowing early moments when the game became a race to safe someone's life.

Cassara, whose age and hometown were not immediately available Thursday, is expected to make a full recovery, authorities said. The game Wednesday was canceled.

Jennifer Carney, a St. James Fire Department EMT, was at the game to watch her daughter, Smithtown freshman defender Brianna, and take photographs.

"I hear people gasp ... I see the ref on his face, so I put the camera down, run over," Carney recalled in a phone interview Thursday with Newsday. "His breathing was inadequate and I knew right away that’s not good breathing. I checked his pulse, there was no carotid pulse, so I immediately started CPR."

Ryan Connolly, 44, a Local 25 Union electrician, former East Islip firefighter and parent of an East Islip High soccer player, also ran over to help.

"We turn him onto his back," Connolly said of the referee. "I was trying to open his airway because we knew we had to get breaths into him — he needed air, but his jaw was locked after he seized. We could see he was starting to swallow his tongue."

Smithtown's JV soccer coach, Amanda Valente, and athletic trainer Kelsey McCulley offered their help.

"When I approached, they were already starting compressions," McCulley said. "I just immediately was like 'what do you guys need?' "

They needed an AED, a device used to deliver an electronic shock to restart the heart during cardiac arrest. 

McCulley had one and "grabbed it out of the back of my cart."

Then, Connolly said, a Nassau County police officer set up the device's pads to administer the shocks. It worked.

"He jolted off the ground a bit and it unlocked his jaw enough to administer mouth-to-mouth," Connolly said.

Another Nassau police officer started the mouth-to-mouth and pushed air into him, Connolly said. "I asked Vito to blink his eyes once for yes and twice for no when he came back to us. Once he became alert, he was answering questions by blinking, and within another two minutes he was talking."

Soon, Carney recalled, Cassara was "asking what happened." When a St. James Fire Department ambulance arrived, she rode with her patient to Stony Brook University Hospital.

"My adrenaline was going until 10 p.m. last night," Connolly said. "I'm so happy that he's alive."

Carney, who works in medical billing, said the experience was unlike anything else she’d witnessed in her roughly two years with the department. Carney said she expects to be at Smithtown’s next home game. Brianna, she added, was "very proud."

Her chief, Daniel Keegan, said his volunteers have responded to incidents on school sports fields before, but usually for sports injuries — not something so potentially dire. Stony Brook doctors told department personnel that Cassara was doing well and expected to make a full recovery, Keegan said.

"This was a very unfortunate situation, but we were there at absolutely the right time, right place," Keegan said. "There were people who sprang into action quickly, and we had a great ending."

Smithtown High School East Principal Paul McNeil, who is also an assistant chief with the Stony Brook Fire Department, praised his team and the parents for their efforts.

"The chains of survival were all there," he said. "It was early recognition that there was an individual in cardiac arrest, early CPR, early defibrillation and they had this individual to a definitive care facility, almost immediately. It all came together very well."

McNeil said coaches and staff checked in on the students after the incident.

"While it was traumatizing, they saw the best of our community together in the sense that everyone worked together for a positive outcome," he said.