The Fall Sports Venue Walk-Through: Turning A Cardiac Emergency Response Plan Into A Response

Your cardiac emergency response plan is written. Here is the part that decides whether it works: has anyone walked it?

The legislative wave that followed the athlete collapses of 2023 and 2024 has largely landed. Pennsylvania's Act 17 of 2026, Greg Moyer's Law, took effect this year and requires an AED at athletic events and practices sanctioned by the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association, along with strengthened cardiac emergency response plans and an annual sudden cardiac arrest drill. Minnesota schools are operating under cardiac emergency response plan requirements for the 2026-27 school year. Tennessee and North Carolina both work from a standard that puts an AED within roughly three minutes of athletic activity.

Most districts responded to those laws by buying devices and writing documents. Both were the right call. Neither is the thing the law is actually asking for, and fall is when the difference shows.

We covered what a plan must contain in our 2026-27 cardiac emergency response plan compliance checklist. This article is about the other half: the walk-through that turns the document into a response, and how to run one at each venue before the season peaks.

Why The Walk-Through Is The Requirement, Not An Extra

Read what these laws ask for and you will notice they describe actions rather than paperwork. Recognition of a cardiac emergency. Activation of emergency medical services. Administration of CPR. Deployment of an AED. Defined response team roles. Regular practice drills. Pennsylvania makes the drill explicit and annual.

Every one of those is a behavior under time pressure, and none of them can be verified by reading a binder. A plan that says "designated staff will retrieve the AED" is compliant on paper and silent on the only question that matters at the moment it is needed, which is how long that retrieval actually takes from where the collapse happened.

The honest reason to walk it is not the audit. It is that the answer is frequently surprising, and it is much better to be surprised in September.

How To Run A Venue Walk-Through

Budget forty minutes per venue. Bring a stopwatch, the written plan, and at least two people who would realistically be present during an event.

Start from the worst position, not the convenient one. Stand at the point furthest from the AED that is still in active use. On a football field that is the far corner or the visiting-team end. In a gymnasium it is the far baseline or the upper bleachers. At a pool it is the far end of the deck. For an auxiliary field, it may be a location with no building nearby at all.

Assign the four roles out loud. Who recognizes and calls it. Who calls 911 and what they say. Who starts compressions. Who runs for the AED. Then add the role most plans omit: who meets the ambulance at the gate and guides it in, because a locked service entrance can cost more minutes than the AED retrieval ever will.

Time the retrieval. Send the person who would actually run, at the pace they would actually run, from the position you chose, and start the clock. Do not walk it. Do not send the athletic director who knows exactly where the cabinet is. The number you get is your real figure, and if your state works from a three-minute standard, this is the measurement that tells you whether you meet it.

Open the cabinet. Every time. This is where walk-throughs earn their reputation, because this is the step that finds the alarm nobody has heard before, the cabinet that has been locked since a theft two years ago, the unit whose status indicator is dark, and the pads that expired in the spring.

Repeat for the evening scenario. Most plans are written for the school day and tested in daylight. Run the same walk for a 7 p.m. event, when the building is partly locked, the main office is dark, and the staff on site are coaches rather than administrators. The answer is often different, and the evening answer is the one that covers most games.

The Three Checks Worth An Hour Before The Next Home Game

Walk the plan at each venue. Football field, gymnasium, pool, auxiliary fields, and any off-site facility your teams use. Off-site venues are the most common gap, because the plan was written for buildings the district owns.

Confirm certifications are current. Not "the athletic trainer." Names, by sport and by season, with the certification expiration date beside each one. Include assistant coaches, who are frequently the nearest adult and just as frequently the least likely to hold a current card. Where a sport has no name to list, you have found a training request rather than a paperwork gap.

Check dates on every unit near a field. Pads and batteries are consumables with hard expiration dates, and a unit can power on and report ready while carrying pads that lapsed months ago. Record every expiration, then set reminders ninety days ahead of each. Devices that sit in unheated field houses and press boxes deserve particular attention, because temperature swings are hardest on pads.

What To Do With What You Find

A walk-through that changes nothing was a rehearsal of a problem. Three outcomes are common and all are fixable in a season.

If the retrieval time is too long, the answer is usually a second device rather than a faster runner. A single AED in a central building does not cover a campus with fields at the perimeter, and the marginal cost of a second unit is small next to the cost of the minutes.

If the cabinet was locked, inaccessible after hours, or alarmed in a way that made staff hesitate, fix the access before you fix anything else. Hesitation at a cabinet is a design failure, not a training failure.

If nobody on the evening roster held a current certification, that is a scheduling problem with a known solution, and September is the month to solve it rather than February.

Document It While It Is Fresh

Write down the date, the venue, who participated, the retrieval time you measured, and what you changed as a result. That record is what an annual drill requirement is asking for, and it is also what makes next year's walk-through take twenty minutes instead of forty.

A plan in a binder is compliance. A plan somebody has walked, timed and corrected is readiness, and the difference between them is one afternoon per venue.

AED Professionals supplies AEDs, replacement pads and batteries, cabinets and signage, and AED program management support to school districts and athletic programs nationwide. If a walk-through turns up a coverage gap or a list of expiring pads, our team can help you work through it. Call 888-541-2337.

Sources

• Pennsylvania Senate Republicans, "Greg Moyer's Law Now in Effect, Expanding AED Access and Strengthening Student Athlete Safety Across Pennsylvania," May 26, 2026: pasenategop.com
• American Heart Association Newsroom, "Minnesota schools implement cardiac emergency response plans for the 2026-27 school year," August 24, 2026: newsroom.heart.org
• Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation, Readiness Systems updates on state AED laws related to schools: sca-aware.org