Dragotta commemorates 10th anniversary of near-fatal heart attack with ceremonial dash to finish the soccer game he couldn’t before
By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News
SEABROOK – It’s 7 a.m. and the November morning sun is barely rising over the acres of fields that spread out as far as the eye can see. The only people up are the kids getting ready for school and the folks taking them there. It’s so cold you can see your breath.
Out on the Cohansey Soccer Club pitch, readied in advance for one man’s approach, a solitary figure breaks the silence, kicking a soccer ball in an otherwise empty complex.
One man. One ball. One goal. No defense. Just the man against the world.
He dribbles from one end of the shortened field to the other, stopping just once, right around the 18 box.
He shoots. He scores. GOOOOOOAL.
There was one around to cheer, but the roars inside the man’s head were as loud as any World Cup final.
He takes a picture of the ball in the back of the goal, quietly takes it from the net. Then heads off to Anderson’s Country Store, his inner circle’s favorite meet-up spot, for a big cup of coffee courtesy of his friends and carries on with the rest of his day.
It’s a ritual Pepi Dragotta has repeated every Nov. 18 for the last 10 years. He hasn’t missed yet – either the date or the goal. He’s scored every time.
“I’m just happy to be there, I’m happy to be on that field to finish the game every year,” he said. “Grabbing that ball out of that net is like taking a knee at the end of the (football) game and winning it. I made it, we won, I can go home and relax.”
It may not mean something to anyone else, and may seem an odd activity to anyone unfamiliar with the story, but it means the world to him. And Tuesday it meant even more … for it was 10 years ago to the day fast-acting friends made another kind of save.
They saved his life.
It was during a kids against the parents soccer game that Dragotta collapsed on the field with a heart attack. But through the quick action of Doug and Deanna Volovar and others he’s here today to take on the challenges and successes of this game called life.
And he marks the occasion every year, returning like a marathoner who finally gets to finish the race to finish the game and score the goal that never got to happen.
“That’s where I started the game and that’s where I’ve gotta finish the game,” he said.
The incident
Pepi Dragotta was headed home from work as a project manager for a large South Jersey electrical contractor on Nov. 18, 2015 – a typical Wednesday evening – when he got a call from his good friend Chubby Weber. They were going to have a game against the kids for the final practice of that year’s Cohansey soccer season and they wanted him to play.
He had been an active in athletics all his life, from high school football player at Cumberland Regional to longtime youth league coach to Sunday trainer to some of the top athletes in Salem and Cumberland counties. But nothing would have prepared him for what was about it happen.
The game had been going for only about four minutes — at least that’s what they told him later — when Dragotta, two months after his 39th birthday, collapsed on the field with a heart attack and went into cardiac arrest.
But thanks to the quick action of longtime friend Volovar, his wife Deanna, and two others at the complex, he is here today.
Initially they thought he was having a seizure, but when they got to his side they discovered he had no pulse. The Volovars along with soccer dad Brian Stanker, a state trooper, and Jeanette Bokma, a coach on an adjacent field with medical training, performed CPR and other life-saving procedures to help their friend while emergency services were on the way.
“It was a shock, something that was unexpected and very scary,” said Volovar, now the athletics director at A.P. Schalick High School. “It was very hard to watch that happen. It was very difficult because I didn’t think it was something major at the time but then to watch it happen and unfold and being right there … it was very difficult.
“When you’re trained to do that kind of stuff you always think that it would be no big deal, I’d jump right in. I wouldn’t say it was traumatic, but it was close to something very traumatic.”
The EMTs, who included the nephew of Dragotta’s late business partner, shocked his heart twice. A medivac helicopter landed in the middle of the field to transport him to the hospital. They placed him in an ice bath for 24 hours. He underwent six bypasses.
Because of the quick actions of his friends, his chances of survival went from 6 percent to 28. Not great odds, but he had a fighting chance.
“The hospital was amazed,” Dragotta said. “They said I was one of the first patients that has ever survived out of hospital with a cardiac arrest. But it was because of Doug and Deanna and the other two people, because they kept oxygen going to my brain.”
“Everybody was kind of involved, it wasn’t primarily just the four of us, there were other parents that were there, too, helping out,” Volovar said. “We just started the life-saving procedures we were familiar with. I think we all had a huge role in it. If everybody who was there didn’t do something and contribute in some way he might not still here.”
They told him he was dead for seven minutes. He wasn’t ready for the final whistle. There was still so much to do.
Had he not survived he wouldn’t have been there to teach his soccer-playing son Hunter a new sport and watch him become a record-setting kicker for the Schalick football team. Or watch his daughter Natalee graduate at the top of her high school class. Or be there to help his wife Jen raise their special needs daughter Hailey. Not to mention all the graduations and birthdays and good times that would be missed.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about it,” Dragotta said. “I travel a lot driving to football and work and different things and you think about it. Like, what happened. That’s what my boss asked me, when you died did you see anything. I said I think I just went to the Gates and said screw this I’m going back.”
Which brings it to this frigid Tuesday morning.
The Dragotta Dash usually takes place with little fanfare. Last year his cousin and a friend showed up to watch, but they stayed in the car and Dragotta carried on as usual. Friends told him over the weekend they’d be there Tuesday because it was a special anniversary, but whether it was the hour, the sub-freezing temperatures or other circumstances he was the only one there this time. And that was OK.
“I scored the goal, then (Volovar) texted me and said ‘Happy Re-birthday, love ya,’ and I sent him a picture of the ball in the back of the net.”
What would he do if the community ever came out en masse to show their support?
“I would damn well make sure that I made that goal,” he said.
He’s never missed.
Paying it forward
When Dragotta first got out of the hospital, his friends wanted to hold a benefit through the Pittsgrove football and Cohansey soccer programs to help ease some of the financial burden of getting back on his feet. He declined the gesture, saying he wasn’t going to take any money.
His friends persisted and he gave his blessing, but told them he was going to make it big and donate all the money they raised to the local sports leagues. But he didn’t know the proper way.
It started with a series of scholarships for students in the two counties with the Volovars, Stanker and Bokma selecting the recipients.
But the night before the benefit Dragotta decided his way to give back was to buy as many portable defibrillators as he could and give them to as many youth recreation facilities as possible. They raised $12,000 that first year and he purchased 12 AEDs and distributed them throughout South Jersey.
The initiative was so well received the friends started Heroes Foundation NJ and to date has donated 150 devices to recreation facilities throughout the state. Dragotta, an electrician by trade, hooked up the unit on the scoreboard at the Schalick football stadium given in honor of former Cougars coach Mike Hars, who died of a heart attack in 2017.
Ironically, a few years back Dragotta and Stanker helped a soccer official in Marlton survive an in-game heart attack with their knowledge and access to an AED.
Since that fateful day in 2015, Dragotta has been all about his family and friends. He’s glad they’re a part of his life and he let them know during a gathering at his home to mark the occasion Sunday night.
“Honestly, I’m happy to be alive, man, I really am,” he said. “When I’m on these websites and I read things about sudden cardiac survivors and these things, I’m very fortunate. A lot of these people are really in bad shape.
“It’s not about me. It’s about my kids and my family and my friends and everybody else. I love my friends, my family, being able to be out there every Friday and Saturday with my son and spending time with my daughters. And my friends. There’s nothing better than it. Nothing better.”
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