Soccer community rallying together after 12-year-old Phoenix girl suffers cardiac arrest

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) - The soccer community is rallying around one Valley family after their 12-year-old daughter had a sudden cardiac arrest on the field just minutes into her practice.

This happened Thursday night, and since then, soccer coaches and teams from all over the country have shown their support while she recovers at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. Her dad, Matt Midkiff, says Pyper Midkiff and her twin sister Emori are star athletes on their youth soccer team. She’s played for six years and has never had any health issues.

Midkiff was coaching soccer for a different team nearby when this happened and sprinted over as soon as he got the call. When he arrived, his first thought was how this could have happened? A mother of a player on the team performed lifesaving CPR until the ambulance got there but, in the ambulance, she lost her pulse again. She was then flown to PCH, where she is in stable condition and seems to be improving.

Just before Arizona’s Family spoke with her dad, Pyper opened her eyes for the first time since her heart attack. “Everyone thinks their kid is special. But Pyper has something special about her and the world needs more people like her. The world needs more Pypers and seeing what I just saw gives me hope. Sports and soccer is more than competition and the support over the past few days shows that everybody gets it over the past few days. Family is important and the kids and the players,” her father said.

He says multiple youth soccer club teams in Arizona, Utah, and California have shown their support for Pyper this weekend. They have even heard wishes of support from the Phoenix Rising Pro team, who took to their Instagram to show a Jersey in her honor.

Pyper’s road to recovery will likely be long as they are still unclear how long she was without a pulse. In the coming days, they will learn more about her brain activity and work to create a diagnosis. In the meantime, however, Pyper’s dad told Arizona’s Family that they learned through testing that she has a genetic condition that--until now--went undiagnosed.

Her family has created a GoFundMe link for her medical costs. If you would like to donate, click here.

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