Seniors Weston Baysinger, Quentin Schmidt, and Koby Larson all practice their resuscitation skills during CPR training at Sanborn Central last week.

More than 350,000 Americans suffer sudden cardiac arrests outside of a hospital each year. Due to this startling fact, South Dakota has become the 36th state to legally require all South Dakota high school students to take CPR training in order to graduate. The new law has taken effect with the 2017-2018 school year.

In order to abide by this new law, the Sanborn Central School District set up CPR training sessions for its seniors and eighth grade students. The seniors went through two hours of training on Thursday, March 8, and the eighth graders received their training for two hours on Monday, March 12.

Both sessions were at Sanborn Central High School and conducted by Sanborn County EMT’s Marla Feistner and Kathy Wingert. The training was funded by the Sanborn County Commissioners.