A day after two baseball coaches were struck by lightning at a Buffalo Grove ballpark, one of them remained in critical condition Tuesday as dozens of young players and their parents were reeling from the accident.
Daniel Rice, 47, was hit directly on the head by a bolt of lightning as he and another coach were deciding whether to call off the 5:30 p.m. game Monday. He is at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood.
Coach Martin Magida, 46, who stood next to Rice, was able to leave Northwest Community Hospital and return to his accounting job Tuesday after getting hit by a “sidesplash” from the lightning that struck Rice.
The 22 players, ages 10 to 12, and their parents spent much of Tuesday coming to grips with the incident. Several children met with school counselors and left get-well messages with their coaches’ families. Some sent cards and flowers to Rice’s hospital room. The teams are in the Buffalo Grove Recreation Association’s Thoroughbred League.
“It was just so sudden. I saw a big lightning strike in the rear-view mirror. We got out, and they were just laying on the ground,” said Cathy Arvanitakis, whose son Adam, 12, plays on Magida’s team and goes to 6th grade with his son Kevin. “My husband called 911 right away. It’s such a scary thing. It could happen at any time.”
The baseball team Rice coaches, the Indians, will meet Wednesday to discuss its future, assistant coach Elliott Becker said. The next practice was scheduled for Friday, but he doesn’t know if it will take place. Becker said his son Jeremy, 10, is especially close to Rice.
“He goes to all the practices, and Dan’s always there teaching him, trying to make him improve,” Becker said. “I was very direct with him about what happened, but Jeremy’s having a hard time facing it. It’s hard on a boy.”
Becker, who began coaching with Rice this spring, said he really admired Rice’s coaching style.
“He isn’t a win-at-all-costs manager by any means, not like a lot of coaches in the little leagues,” Becker said. “He cares about the kids, and he wants them to have fun.”
Dominic Dovichi, president of the recreation association, which runs the league, said Rice hasn’t been in the program very long, but Magida has been a coach for six or seven years.
“He’s such a strong guy. We kept saying a little bit of lightning wasn’t going to keep Marty down,” said Valerie Gangware, whose son Eddie is a catcher on Magida’s Astros team.”He’s just a wonderful coach, absolutely dedicated to the kids, and we were praying all night he would be OK.”
Dovichi said the coaches were following an established safety procedure–keeping players in cars until storms pass–before the game. The rain had passed and the sky had brightened slightly when Rice and Magida went to check the field again.
“That’s when they got hit,” he said. “It was a freak accident.”
Dovichi said a Buffalo Grove Park District referendum measure that was defeated last year would have included $75,000 for lightning detectors at playing fields. “I wish we would have had that system in place,” he said.
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According to Dr. Mary Ann Cooper, an expert on lightning injury at the University of Illinois at Chicago, 73 lightning deaths are reported annually in the U.S.
Lightning-strike death occurs because of cardiac arrest at the time of injury, Cooper said, but some victims may die a few days later if they are resuscitated but have suffered irreversible brain damage.