BY

BRUCE?CRAWFORD

SPORTS?WRITER

Quick action by several River High School faculty members help saved the life of a basketball referee Roger Kimble after a girls varsity game, Jan. 10 against Fort Frye.

Close to the end of a tight game, Kimble started to feel ill. After the game, he told his two partners, Dale Lewis and Jim Hood, he was going home to take a shower since he lived pretty close.

On his way out, he had symptoms of a heart attack and walked out into the balcony in R. L. Potts Gymnasium to get help. He saw custodian Matt Potts cleaning the bleachers and asked him to get some help because he wasn’t feeling well.

Potts yelled out to River Head Coach Rick Isaly, Assistant Coach Jessica Hunnell, and River Athletic Director Tom Tisher, who were chatting on the other side of the gym.

During this time, Tisher called the Belmont County Sheriff 911 dispatcher, Carol Coleman, to summon help for a potential heart attack patient. The way the system works, the dispatcher had to call the Clarington and Sardis Emergency Squads.

During this time Isaly’s wife, Carla, and friend Vicki Jones who works at the Wetzel County Hospital in the radiology department, talked with Kimble and assessed that he was failing fast.

She told Tisher he should call the Ohio dispatcher and cancel the call, while she contacted the Wetzel County Emergency Squad. Kimble, she believed, was running out of wait time. A squad arrived five minutes later.

During these five minutes, a bunch of people stepped up and helped. Bob Cicogna, a coach, came on the scene and Kimble asked him to go to his truck and get his wallet that had powdered aspirin in it. Cicogna responded as fast as Jim Thorpe could.

This proved to a blessing, too. While all this was occurring, the River staff called Kimble’s wife and told her what was going on. Physicians recommend taking aspirin under these circumstances, as it thins the blood and may prevent deadly clots from forming.

Kimble was stabilized at Wetzel County Hospital and transferred, by air, to Wheeling Cardiologist Robert Fanning. Fanning began Kimble’s treatment by placing a stent in his coronary artery.

Less than two minutes after Kimble was transported from the school, Clarington squad was on the scene and two minutes later, the Sardis squad arrived.

It was a second chance for Kimble. It also was a second chance for River High School. Pilot graduate and Head Boys’ Baseball Coach, the late Rick Bonar, had a heart attack in 1998 during a football game against Federal Hocking. However, Bonar did not recover.

The stars were aligned that day. River High School took care of business quickly and effectively, as did the emergency squads, WCH, the hospital-based helicopter, and, of course, the medical staff at Wheeling Hospital.

The quick action by many helped Kimble regain his life. “I am indebted to all who were involved and attribute a great deal of my recovery to the prompt early response I received at River High,” said Kimble.

Kimble, a karate student and basketball official, kept physically fit and now has lost 29 pounds. He is in better shape than ever.

Since returning home, he has completed more than six sessions of cardiac rehabilitation and is now back working fulltime at the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Services in New Martinsville. He also is back tooting his whistle for basketball games.

The quick action by everyone saved not only a good sports official, but a fine person and my good friend, Roger.