Max Oliver appeal funds cardiac screening for 200 Bishop’s Stortford High School students

Two hundred students at Bishop’s Stortford High School have been scanned for heart defects as part of a memorial to former pupil Max Oliver.

The 31-year-old captain of Bishop’s Stortford Rugby Football Club’s (BSRFC) Chindits team suffered a cardiac arrest on a train between Newbury and Reading, in Berkshire, on his way to work on September 5 last year.

Despite efforts by an off-duty police officer and paramedics to save him, he could not be revived.

His devastated family raised £50,000 in his name to provide cardiac screening by healthcare professionals from CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young).

Max’s dad, Perry, revealed that while living at the family home in Stansted, Max had described how his heart sometimes “fluttered” and had “episodes” after setting up home with fiancée Molly in Newbury.

Every week in the UK, at least 12 young people die of undiagnosed heart conditions. CRY works to reduce the frequency of young sudden cardiac death by promoting and developing heart screening programmes and funding medical research.

Over two days, 200 sixth-formers at the Beaumont Avenue secondary were scanned by the CRY team.

Max’s younger brother Teddy, who also attended TBSHS and worked in the PE department for a gap year before going to Loughborough University, accompanied his mum, Lizzie, to the school to review progress.

She said: “Max was very happy at this school, as was Teddy, and we wanted to do something to help, and hopefully prevent other families from going through what we have had to go through.”

George Munro, assistant headteacher and head of sixth form, said: “We are unbelievably grateful to the Oliver family for funding the screenings for nearly 200 students.

“Max and Teddy were great students and alumni members of the TBSHS community, and to do this in memory of Max is an excellent way to honour his memory.”