Team under fire after player collapses during military-style workout; remains in critical condition

Arizona State defenseman Matthew Mayich, a 21-year-old St. Louis Blues draft pick, has been hospitalized in critical condition after collapsing during an intense military-style outdoor workout on Aug. 20, prompting scrutiny of the training session and the outside instructor who led it.

The roughly 60-minute session took place on the first day of ASU's fall semester, the earliest date NCAA rules permit hockey teams to begin formal activities. According to multiple individuals briefed on the incident, the workout included sprints, planks, push-ups, and bear crawls, with a heavy emphasis on repeating instructions back to the leader and maintaining an accurate count of each exercise. Players who fell behind or failed to follow directions were required to perform additional sprints or exercises as punishment.

Participants were also told not to complain, a directive that some players reportedly interpreted as a warning not to speak up even if they were physically struggling. Two sources indicated that the instructor left before the final drill, a medicine ball run spanning the length of a football field and back, was completed.

The instructor has been identified as Tim Ziesel, a 39-year-old former military service member with a background in the Navy and Army Special Forces, including time as a Green Beret. Ziesel is not a university employee. When contacted, he declined to discuss the workout and referred inquiries to ASU, saying he did not know "the whole situation."

Experts raise alarms over ASU's handling of the workout

An ASU spokesperson confirmed that the athletic department has heat illness protocols informed by the National Athletic Trainers' Association, as well as institutional guidelines for engaging outside entities that interact with student-athletes. However, the university declined to answer questions about who authorized the session or whether any coaches or athletic trainers were present during the drill. Officials said they are reviewing the circumstances.

Multiple independent experts told reporters that the workout raised significant red flags. Rebecca Stearns, COO of the Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut, pointed to a troubling pattern of athlete hospitalizations tied to military-style training applied to school sports settings. She emphasized that using exercise as punishment is a dangerous approach, noting that data consistently links such practices to harmful outcomes.

Rod Walters, an athletic trainer and consultant specializing in athlete safety, said the trend of military-style workouts among school teams has been declining precisely because of incidents like this one. He stressed the importance of vetting outside instructors and ensuring their methods are rooted in exercise science rather than motivational intensity.

The risks of bringing in an outside instructor are amplified by the fact that such a person typically does not know the individual athletes or their physical limits. The danger increases further when the exercises are not specific to the sport, creating unrealistic expectations for what players can tolerate. A similar situation unfolded in September 2024 at Tufts University, where a workout partially led by a former Navy SEAL resulted in 24 of 61 lacrosse players developing rhabdomyolysis, a condition that can cause kidney failure. Nine players were hospitalized. An independent investigation found the SEAL had no credentials to lead group exercise and was unfamiliar with NCAA physical acclimation guidelines.

Not all military-inspired training is inherently reckless, however. Jason Kuhn, a retired Navy SEAL who has worked with athletic teams, said the key is scaling workouts to athletes' conditions, encouraging players to report injuries, and building in water breaks and body checks after each drill. He drew a clear distinction between training soldiers for combat and conditioning college athletes.

On the day Mayich collapsed, the temperature in Tempe was 86 degrees at 6:51 a.m. with 51 percent humidity and no wind. Under those conditions, the National Weather Service recommends 15 minutes of rest for every hour of physical activity. Experts noted that heat acclimation typically requires 10 to 14 days of gradual exposure, and that new players arriving from different climates, as Mayich did after transferring from Clarkson University in upstate New York, face heightened risk.

Three professionals with experience in NHL and college-level athletic training all agreed there is no performance-based reason for a hockey player to train outdoors in the heat. Dr. Stephen Paul, a former University of Arizona Director of Athletic Medicine, said outdoor practices at his institution never took place without a full preseason evaluation, an emergency action plan, the presence of medical personnel, and access to a cold tub and rectal thermometer.

Exertional heat stroke can be fatal in up to a third of cases if left untreated, but cooling a patient within 30 minutes of collapse reduces the mortality rate to nearly zero. As ASU continues its review, the incident has reignited a broader conversation about the boundaries of team-building exercises and the responsibility institutions bear when outsourcing athlete conditioning to unvetted third parties.

As Stearns put it simply: "The first day should never be the hardest workout."