Toledo’s Myles Copeland saves TBL ref’s life with CPR
TOLEDO, Ohio (BVM) – Myles Copeland saved the life of a referee and became a hero on June 11 thanks to his CPR training as a firefighter.
“It was just instinctual,” Copeland said. “I just saw him drop to the floor and I looked over and he looked just lifeless. He was completely unconscious, unresponsive to anything so I just instantly ran over there.”
The Basketball League (TBL) was in the middle of a playoff game between the Jamestown Jackals and the Toledo Glass City Basketball Club when ref John Sculli suddenly collapsed on the court.
“He took about five steps and fell down,” TBL president and owner David Magley said. “By the time I got there his eyes were in the back of his head and he wasn’t breathing.”
It was at that moment that Copeland went from a player for Glass City to a Toledo firefighter. He sprinted over to Sculli, felt for a pulse and checked his breathing. Sculli had neither, and so Copeland began administering CPR.
While this was happening, Magley, along with others, was beginning to form a circle around Sculli and that’s when he noticed Copeland giving Sculli CPR.
“I look closer and he’s got one of our uniforms on,” Magley said. “I didn’t see him get there, he moved so quick I didn’t see him.”
Copeland informed everyone he was a firefighter and then instructed the group to look for a defibrillator and call 911. Meanwhile, Copeland along with another referee and a TBL trainer worked to revive Sculli, trying to bring him back to life while everyone waited for paramedics to arrive.
“He was so calm and so relaxed and he just kept working on him,” Magley said.
Copeland administered CPR to Sculli for more than 10 minutes. The collapsed referee also received two shocks from the defibrillator before the paramedics arrived. Once there, the paramedics administered drugs to Sculli and also gave him another shock from the defibrillator.
“Finally he came back around and he was joking about how he was just going to get up and finish reffing the game,” Copeland said.
Sculli made it to the hospital and will be having triple bypass surgery but does plan to make a return to officiating at some point. However, the fact that he went from having no pulse to joking with people as he was being taken to the hospital after more than 10 minutes of CPR is incredible. It goes from incredible to other worldly when the fact that Copeland wasn’t supposed to be there is added to the heroic story.
“When I learned that Myles wasn’t supposed to be there, that he had never traveled with the team, that he was scheduled to work and he took the day off so he could be a part of the playoffs you have to go, ‘My God,’” Magley said. “It’s too much of a coincidence to me to not give credit to something greater.”
Due to his work as a firefighter, Copeland’s basketball career with Toledo Glass City had to be worked around his schedule. In fact, he had worked a 24-hour shift prior to driving to Jamestown, New York for the game.
Copeland says it was more than just being in the right place at the right time. He tells anyone who asks about the event that it was divine intervention.
“It almost felt like God was with me or something divine happened because you very rarely get that kind of response with having performed CPR,” Copeland said.
Once he was done saving someone’s life and Sculli was on his way to the hospital, Copeland re-entered the gymnasium to a standing ovation.
“I helped stretch him out to the ambulance and then I walked back in the gym and everyone is giving me a standing ovation and hootin’ and hollerin’,” Copeland said. “I’m kind of overwhelmed at that point but then my team comes over to me and starts hugging.”
Each team got 10 minutes to warm back up, during which Copeland was receiving handshakes and congratulations from the opposing team as well as the fans in the stands. But to Copeland, he was just doing his job.
“Even when you’re off the job, you’re still kind of on the job,” Copeland said. “You have all this training, experience, you know what to look for and people are always in need so if you’re close enough to help, hopefully you can jump right in.”
It was a moment that encapsulated two things Copeland loves: being a firefighter and basketball. In college, he played basketball at Trine University in Indiana and majored in biochemistry. Copeland wanted to get involved with research developing different devices and drugs to help with Type 1 diabetes, which he has. However, after college, he was finding it hard to pursue that career so he began looking for something new.
He had played basketball at St. John’s Jesuit High School in Toledo, then with the Trine Thunder, and had loved the game since he was a little kid. But he was missing the sport after college and that was what first drove him towards being a firefighter.
“I was really missing that team environment and that camaraderie,” Copeland said. “Firefighting just happened to fall into my lap and I was like, ‘That is the perfect job for me. You can combine the camaraderie, the team environment, reaching out to the community and helping people. Responding to emergencies and having an impact on people’s lives.’ It was really kind of like a calling that hit me when I found the job.”
Copeland began his career as a firefighter but was still missing basketball. For his entire life, it had been his escape from the rest of the world. A way for him to decompress and have some stress relief. So Copeland reached out to an old high school teammate and he told Copeland about a local, professional basketball team called the Toledo Glass City Basketball Club. Copeland tried out, made the team and worked it out so that he could play around his work schedule.
All of it led up to the events that took place in Jamestown and showed Copeland what basketball can do beyond the court.
“My college coach always said that basketball can be a key that opens many doors and even just seeing what happened at the event with John has opened a lot of doors with me,” Copeland said.
The door that was opened on Saturday led to Copeland saving a life and showing everyone why CPR knowledge is vital.
“A heart attack could happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time, so just knowing the basic steps of CPR to keep the heart pumping until the paramedics get there is always important,” Copeland said.
