The Arizona State hockey team plays their home opener on Friday, but hanging over their season, and the entire program, will be what happened to defenseman Matthew Mayich. At an outdoor, "military-style" team workout on Aug. 20, Mayich collapsed from exertional heat stroke. He's been in the hospital on life support ever since, with his family attorneys saying that he has "zero chance" of making a complete recovery.
Mayich's hospitalization has shone a harsh light on both the ASU administration and the wider culture of "military-style" workouts in athletics. The guy who ran this ASU workout, Tim Ziesel, is a former Army Green Beret who pushed the players through intense exercises in high-80s heat with limited water, and he ordered extra running for those who didn't perform to his specifications. An Ontario native and 2023 St. Louis Blues draft pick who transferred to ASU from Clarkson University in upstate New York, Mayich was one of 18 new players on the roster this season and was unused to the Arizona climate, putting him more at risk for heat stroke. According to The Athletic, when Mayich collapsed to the ground, "he stayed in the sun for several minutes before four players carried him into the shade."
The workout was symbolic of a philosophy that head coach Greg Powers, the only man to coach the program since it joined D-I in 2015, attempted to implement after a lackluster end to the previous season. “I hate to say the word ‘soft,’ but that’s what we were,” Powers said in May. “And it became contagious." Per The Athletic, he was known around the program for a quick temper and a willingness to insult his players. Ziesel's whole deal seems specifically engineered to appeal to a guy who's anxious about making his charges "tougher." Per ASU players, Ziesel told them during the workout that he didn't drink water during combat and that "none of [the players] were worthy of his daughter."
This wouldn't be the first time in recent years that a so-called military style workout from an outsider led to severe consequences for college athletes: In 2024, nine Tufts University men's lacrosse players were hospitalized after a group workout led by a recent graduate who was inspired by his Navy SEAL training.
ASU's initial review of the workout, conducted by executive vice president James Rund and released on Sept. 22, came to only the most tepid of conclusions: that an advisory panel should be created to make recommendations on outdoor activities and outside consultants. It did not assign any responsibility for Mayich's collapse, and according to some players, it got the facts wrong about the events of that morning in August. In response to the review, seven players sent a letter to the school on Sept. 28 asking that all staff associated with the workout be placed on administrative leave. Two days later, just before the start of the season, Powers went on paid leave, though the rest of his staff is still in place. On Friday, ASU announced that it has commissioned an independent investigation of the workout.
When Minnesota Vikings offensive tackle Korey Stringer died from complications of heat stroke in 2001, the NFL made significant changes to its protocols around conditioning and hydration to try to ensure it would never happen again. But those kinds of meaningful regulations are much easier to implement in a league that's tightly controlled and relatively small. College sports—and high school sports, for that matter—don't concentrate power in anywhere near the same way, allowing instead for a bunch of fiefdoms run by petty tyrants who seemingly have to step far, far over the line before they're even noticed. Matthew Mayich will never be the same again, and so far the only consequence anyone has faced for his condition is a paid vacation. College programs are never going to be proactive about this stuff; only a sufficiently long trail of disasters and lawsuits will put the fear of god into them.
