Matthew Mayich, the 21-year-old Arizona State hockey player who collapsed during an outdoor workout in August, is unlikely to recover after suffering exertional heat stroke that choked oxygen flow to his brain. Now, Arizona State has brought in former state chief justice Scott Bales to lead an independent review of what happened, but Mayich’s family isn’t buying the school’s version of “independent” accountability.
The Tragic Collapse and ASU’s Limited ‘Review’
This whole situation is heartbreaking, man. Mayich, just 21, went down during a workout in August, right on the first day the NCAA allowed official activities. Family attorney Rob Carey confirmed the devastating news: exertional heat stroke reduced oxygen to his brain, and recovery is a long shot. It’s just gut-wrenching to think about.
Arizona State, trying to get ahead of this, has asked Scott Bales, who was chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court from 2014 to 2019, to lead an independent review. James Rund, ASU’s senior vice president of educational outreach and student services, laid it out in a memo to President Michael Crow. Bales is supposed to review the school’s own findings, plus information from the Mayich family’s attorneys, the hockey team’s attorneys, and law enforcement. His job is to make recommendations on things like planning, approval, staffing, and policies for outdoor athletic activities, and even look at how they use outside consultants for strength and conditioning. ASU wants this review done by early December. Sounds official, right? But the family has some serious questions about what’s actually getting looked at.
The Mayich Family Says ASU Is Missing The Point, Big Time
Here’s where it gets real. While the Mayich family is happy Bales is involved, they are NOT happy with the scope of his review. Through their attorney, Rob Carey, they dropped a statement saying Bales needs to dig into *why* the workout was even allowed to happen. They want to know *why* it wasn’t stopped when players were in visible distress, without water or rest. And, crucially, they want to know *which* school, conference, and NCAA rules got broken.
“Justice Bales is a respected choice and he will do an excellent job,” the family’s statement read. “But ASU hired him to review policies that may help prevent a tragedy like this in the future. That’s not what’s needed right now.” They’re pushing for an actual investigation into “what went wrong on that field and who is responsible.” They say Bales hasn’t been asked to answer those “fundamental questions.”
The family even brought up the tragic death of Maryland football player Jordan McNair in 2018, who also collapsed during a workout. Maryland hired outside investigators, and their findings went public via the Maryland Board of Regents. The Mayich family wants Bales to report to the Arizona Board of Regents, not to “the office whose own review has missed too much.” They’re calling for ASU to expand Bales’ mandate, bring in experts, or appoint a second independent investigator to scrutinize “what ASU’s employees did and failed to do, and the conduct of whomever they allowed to run the workout that left Matthew Mayich in a hospital bed fighting for his life.”
And get this: Arizona State’s preliminary report on its own investigation already pointed out that the hockey coaching staff asked former Green Beret Timothy Ziesel to speak with the team during a three-day event. But the report says the coaching staff didn’t “submit a plan of training activities for review by ASU’s strength and conditioning coaches prior to the event.” That’s a huge detail, and it makes you wonder what else might have been missed.
Bales is tasked with completing his review by early December. But with the Mayich family pushing hard for real answers, not just a policy review, it feels like this story is far from over. Everyone needs to watch closely to see if ASU actually expands Bales’ mandate or if they stick to a review that, according to the family, already “missed too much.”
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
Originally reported by Bleacher Report.
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