High School Water Polo Player Dies at Practice
A 17-year-old water polo player at Saddleback High School died Wednesday after collapsing on the pool deck during practice, Saddleback Principal Lyn Maher said.
About 4:45 p.m., late in practice on the first day of school, Jaffet “Jeff” Campos appeared to be going into cardiac arrest, Maher said.
Paramedics were summoned, and water polo Coach Monte McCord and cross-country Coach Mel Silva performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Paramedics arrived and continued to try to revive Campos on the way to nearby Coastal Communities Hospital.
Resuscitation efforts continued in the hospital’s emergency room, but he was pronounced dead at 5:50 p.m., a hospital spokeswoman said.
Maher said Campos had passed a physical “just a week or two ago.”
The water polo team met at school Thursday and the school district sent a team of psychologists and counselors to provide support.
Maher said the players “are very grieved to lose him. It’s hard for them to understand because he was 17, very healthy and very fit and had had a successful practice.”
Campos is the second water polo player in as many years to die during practice. Last October, Gray Lunde, a 14-year-old freshman on the Newport Harbor High freshman-sophomore team, died of a heart attack.
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