The most unsettling part of the Matthew Mayich story is not that a workout went wrong. It is that a 21-year-old athlete collapsed in extreme heat, remains hospitalized, and now sits at the center of a review that goes beyond one practice session and into how Arizona State University handles risk. This is no longer just about one ASU hockey player. It is about whether the conditions, the staffing and the decision-making around an outdoor team event met the standard they should have.
Mayich, a sophomore defenseman from Ontario, Canada, collapsed during an outdoor workout in Tempe on Aug. 20, when temperatures reached 106 degrees. After that, he was rushed to a local hospital and has remained hospitalized. On Tuesday, Robert Carey said Mayich was incapacitated and that his condition is highly unlikely to change. Carey also said his family is at his side and grateful for the support they have received from the hockey community and from Mayich’s teammates.
What Arizona State is reviewing
Arizona State University said it is reviewing the circumstances surrounding the workout, along with the university policies, procedures and training protocols connected to it. That matters because this was not described as an isolated, unsupervised effort. The workout was an outdoor team event with coaches, training staff and a third party present, which raises obvious questions about how heat-illness guidelines were applied and whether the environment was suitable for sustained exertion.
Sun Devil Athletics said it has heat-illness guidelines informed by the National Athletic Trainers’ Association. In a state where summer heat can turn routine training into a medical emergency, those guidelines are not just paperwork. They are the line between a hard session and a dangerous one. Dr. Frank LoVecchio’s warnings capture why this case has drawn so much concern: it is very hard to train in that heat, he said, and even athletes may not be able to exercise really, really hard for a long time in Arizona’s middle-of-the-day conditions without assistance. He also noted that temperature can rise very quickly and that it does not take long to burn brain cells.
That is the central tension here. Arizona State has said Coach Powers and other staff will continue to support the hockey student-athletes while the review is ongoing. But support after the fact is not the same as confidence in the process before the fact. The university now has to show that it understands not only what happened to Mayich, but also whether its protocols were strong enough for the conditions on Aug. 20.
This is a painful reminder that college sports stories are not always about wins, losses or rankings. Sometimes they are about safety, responsibility and the consequences of getting the details wrong. For ASU Hockey, the next chapter is not competitive. It is institutional. And until the review is complete, that remains the story.
