PHOENIX – Seven Arizona State men’s hockey players asked ASU President Michael Crow on Monday to place the Sun Devils coaching staff on administrative leave. They say the university’s review of the Aug. 20 workout that left teammate Matthew Mayich on life support got key facts wrong and did not hold anyone responsible.

In their 26-page letter, sent through their attorney, Tim Casey, the players say Mayich never received water during a workout that ran more than 75 minutes. They also say he showed signs of distress long before he collapsed and was not properly cooled before paramedics arrived.

The ASU players sent the letter anonymously, writing that they fear retaliation from coach Greg Powers and his assistants, who “decide our playing time, scholarship levels, and roster status.”

The news prompted Arizona’s House and Senate education chairs to ask the Arizona Board of Regents Monday to retain an independent investigator to examine the incident.

The seven players who sent the letter make up roughly a quarter of the roster. They wrote that other teammates share their concerns but did not sign for the same reason. The letter says Casey holds “signed attestations” from the players confirming they are members of the team and were in attendance when Mayich suffered heatstroke.

“We should not have to choose between telling the truth about August 20 and keeping what we have worked our whole lives for,” they wrote.

Along with leave for the staff who approved, ran and supervised the workout, the players also requested:

• An investigation by “an agency outside the university”
• Written assurance that no player will be punished for speaking out
• An interim coaching staff during the investigation, naming former Coyotes captain Shane Doan as “an excellent candidate”

Mayich is a 21-year-old sophomore transfer from Stoney Creek, Ontario, in Canada. He had been in Arizona eight days when he collapsed at the end of the team’s first preseason workout at Sun Angel Stadium. Family attorney Robert Carey has said Mayich suffered an exertional heatstroke that deprived his brain of oxygen and has no chance of a meaningful recovery.

The Sept. 28 letter responds point-by-point to the initial review by ASU Senior Vice President James Rund, delivered to Crow on Sept. 21.

The workout was run by Tim Ziesel, a former Green Beret whom an ASU booster introduced to the program. 

ASU policy bars outside consultants from working with athletes until they are approved. Rund’s report shows a request to use Ziesel was submitted Aug. 12 without a training plan, but the report does not say whether the request was ever reviewed or approved.

The players wrote that the only water break came 35 to 45 minutes in, not at 20 minutes as Rund’s report found. When Powers told Ziesel to get the players water, Ziesel said, “Oh yeah, I forgot, you guys need water,” according to the letter. Only the first eight or so players to finish a bear crawl reached the bottles, the letter said, adding that Mayich was still crawling and never received any water.

Rund’s report said Mayich appeared to struggle during the final drill, a medicine-ball relay. The players wrote that he was disoriented much earlier and could not carry a teammate during a buddy-carry exercise. At one point, they wrote, he had to lean on a teammate to stay upright.

Ziesel left after assigning the medicine-ball relay, though Mayich was struggling before he left, according to the players. Only ASU coaches and an athletic trainer were supervising when Mayich collapsed.

“No one at ASU properly monitored him during the workout and no one intervened,” the players wrote.

The players said the trainer sat Mayich upright twice, contradicting the report’s statement that he was kept on the ground. The letter said Mayich lay in direct sun for several minutes. Cooling came from a few towels, squirt bottles and less than a minute of warm water from a garden hose, the letter said, despite ASU’s heat policy calling for a cold-water immersion tub..

There was no tub on site, and no one used the tub inside Mullett Arena.

The players also dispute the report’s statements that Mayich was acclimatized. They wrote that his only previous outdoor work was a few five-minute stretches broken up by breaks in air conditioning. They also cited a video of one drill showing the players in a “plank” position in direct sunlight, which contradicts the report’s description of a mostly cloudy sky.

After an ambulance arrived and took Mayich to the hospital, the letter states, Powers told players he had “just a little heat stroke” and “just needs an IV.” The next day, the players stated, the coach told them Mayich would be fine and the team went ahead with practice.

ASU opens its season at 5 p.m. Friday at Lindenwood. The letter asks Crow to act “if the facts in this report warrant it” and to name an interim coaching staff before the opener.

Meanwhile, House Education Committee Chairman Matt Gress, R-Phoenix, and Senate Education Committee Chairman Hildy Angius, R-Bullhead City, cite unresolved questions about whether ASU followed its own policies.

“Seven players who were on that field have raised serious questions that ASU’s own review does not answer,” Gress said in a statement. “We need an independent investigation to determine whether ASU followed its own rules, who was responsible for protecting these athletes, and what happened when Matthew Mayich showed signs of distress. ASU should not be left to investigate its own conduct and decide whether anyone should be held accountable.”

This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.