Starting Wednesday, every Florida high school student who wants to play sports must undergo an electrocardiogram (ECG) screening, under a new state law aimed at catching hidden heart conditions before they turn deadly.

Senate Bill 1070, known as the Second Chance Act, was passed by the Florida Legislature in 2025 and takes effect July 1. It makes Florida the first state in the nation to mandate ECG screenings for student-athletes.

The law’s passage followed a string of cardiac incidents involving young athletes across the state, including the case of Jeremiyah Shepeard, a Tampa teenager who collapsed during an AAU basketball tournament in Tennessee in May 2025.

Shepeard, who had played basketball competitively since age seven, told his father he didn’t feel well moments before the collapse. He was taken to a hospital and later referred to a pediatric cardiologist in Tampa.

An ECG and CT scan revealed Shepeard had an anomalous right coronary artery, a congenital heart defect in which the artery is misrouted from the wrong side of the heart. Dr. Anjlee Patel, a pediatric cardiologist at AdventHealth Tampa, said the condition is the second-leading cause of sudden cardiac arrest in athletes.

“It’s a test that looks at the electricity of the heart, but it also gives us information about the structure of the heart in the sense of thickening to the heart muscle, chamber enlargement, arrhythmias and things,” Patel said of the ECG. “So, it really does give us quite a bit of information at our fingertips.”

Shepeard underwent open-heart surgery to correct the defect. He was cleared to return to basketball just over a year after his surgery.

Not every athlete with an undiagnosed heart condition has gotten that chance. Antonio Hicks, a football player at Citrus High School, died after collapsing during practice in September 2021. An autopsy found he had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a condition doctors say an ECG would likely have detected.

Hicks’ mother, Lakesha Harrison, said her son’s death helped drive momentum for the legislation that became the Second Chance Act.

Patel said she believes the new screening requirement will save lives going forward.

The nonprofit Who We Play For is hosting ECG screening events for student-athletes across Florida this summer. AdventHealth said it offers ECGs for $15 at its facilities.

Follow the St. Pete-Clearwater Sun on Facebook, Google, & X

St. Pete-Clearwater Sun: local St. Pete-Clearwater news at PIE-Sun.com