Whenever Kennady Kasteler sees her friend in the hallways at school, she wants to hug him, the biggest hug she’s ever given anyone. Then she remembers his broken ribs. Still, Mike le Fear probably wouldn’t care. Never mind that Kennady is the one who broke them.
She’s also the one who saved his life.
“We’re so happy to see each other all the time,” Kennady says.
This week, the Utah Jazz and forward Georges Niang honored Kennady, a Brighton High School senior cheerleader, for rushing into action and performing life-saving CPR on her friend at a Junior Jazz basketball game last month.
“I’m so glad and honored that I got to meet someone that has that type of heroism in her DNA,” said Niang, who signed jerseys and spent some time talking with Kennady before Wednesday’s game at Vivint Smart Home Arena.
The 17-year-old Kennady simply credits instinct and training.
At a Junior Jazz game in January, she peeked through a partition and saw her friends, crying and helpless. So the Brighton High cheerleader made her way to the other side of the gymnasium to see what was the matter. She recognized the player on the floor. Kennady and Mike had known each other since middle school. He was on his back, his body limp, his face an unnerving shade. He’d had a seizure and suffered cardiac arrest.
Kennady, a certified lifeguard, and a parent who was a registered nurse sprung to action.
“You do two-breath ventilations and I’ll start compressions,” Kennady recalled saying. “There wasn’t time to have a reaction. You just had to go. It was like tunnel vision.”
The two performed CPR until emergency personnel arrived on the scene. Later, as Mike recovered in a medically induced coma, Kennady was told her compressions were vital in saving her friend’s life.
“I think he would have died otherwise,” she acknowledges.
For Niang, the meeting was meaningful. The forward had recently championed CPR training in Utah as part of American Heart Month. Niang and the American Heart Association provided training for 25 Junior Jazz youth. The forward also donated $10,000 to the Association to help purchase 100 CPR take-home kits.
“It rings close to me,” he said. “I’ve had personal experiences with people around me that have suffered from heart attacks and death. What she did was heroic. To have the awareness to check if someone was OK in that moment and to keep her nerves calm and deliver CPR is just amazing, especially for a high school kid. To have that much poise and maturity, it just speaks to her character.”