Referee Joe Gaskin saved by longtime friend Jennifer Keane during Nassau title basketball game

A referee who collapsed on the court during a championship high school basketball game last month was saved thanks to rescue efforts led by his longtime friend, Massapequa resident Jennifer Keane.

Keane, the assistant boys basketball coordinator for the New York State Public High School Athletic Association’s Section VIII, was sitting at the scorer’s table as Floral Park and West Hempstead high schools battled for the Nassau County Class A title at Farmingdale State College on March 8.

During the first quarter, referee Joe Gaskin hit the floor and “turned blue” before soon losing his pulse, she said.

“I jumped up and ran over and I could hear he was struggling for breath,” said Keane, 47, who is also athletic director for the Wantagh school district. “I immediately went into the mode of doing everything I could to help.”

Keane took charge by instructing the West Hempstead team to vacate their bench so they couldn’t see what was happening and then held Gaskin’s hand and talked to him while several nurses — Monica Lally, Darlene Sica and Tiffany Vargas — who were attending as spectators cut off his shirt and began chest compressions, she said. Keane said she called for, and then prepared, a nearby automated external defibrillator (AED), a medical device that delivers an electric shock in case of sudden cardiac arrest.

Keane said she had saved another colleague nearly 20 years ago by using an AED on a custodian who’d collapsed when she was an athletic trainer at Jericho High School.

When Gaskin, 64, of Franklin Square, regained consciousness following the shock, Keane said he was “agitated and disoriented,” but calmed down upon seeing her familiar face. He was then transported to Plainview Hospital and diagnosed with having a parasite in his heart that affected the pumping of his blood, he said.

“I felt myself having a tough time catching my breath ... and I remember bending over and apparently I collapsed,” recalled Gaskin, who has refereed for 37 years and is a retired New York State Court sergeant. “The next thing I remember is laying on my back and looking up. I said, ‘Jen, I don’t know what happened, but I’m glad I’m looking at your face and not God’s.’ ”

Matthew McLees, Sewanhaka Central High School District’s athletic director, credited Keane for keeping the referee alive.

“Jen was simply awesome with her display of compassion,” McLees said. “She would not let Joe leave us. She spoke to him the entire time he was out, demanding Joe stay with her. I believe what we witnessed was divine intervention.”

By Michael R. Ebert

michael.ebert@newsday.com

Michael R. Ebert is an education researcher and has worked for Newsday in various capacities since 2003. He was part of an 11-person team named as 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalists for investigative coverage of the LIRR's platform safety issues.