An Up-Close View of a Mountaintop Miracle

Sometimes, things happen for a reason.

Words like unimaginable or impossible are often associated with uncanny events or circumstances. In the lacrosse world, the ball bounces funny and goes in the cage. Or, it just catches a piece of the goalie and is flicked aside. You never know.

Initially, Joe Bottner wasn’t sure if he was going to Vail this summer as he had in past years. However, a few weeks before last week’s Vail Lacrosse Shootout, Bottner committed to play with a conglomeration of veteran club teammates.

Friends from Cloud Splitter (the Upstate, N.Y., team that Bottner normally plays on in Lake Placid), Baltimore-based Mr. Boh, and Checkmate (Long Island) decided to combine forces in 2024 and field a team in the ZenMasters (60+) division. And so, Bottner was going to be in goal when needed once again to make saves.

As one would surmise from Vail’s list of club teams and its ZenMasters division, Bottner has been playing lacrosse for a long time now. Having grown up on Long Island, he discovered his passion for the game at age 13. Goalie was his primary position since graduating as an All-Division player for Massapequa High School before heading to Virginia to mind the nets for the Cavaliers in the late 70s and early 80s, and earning All-ACC honors along the way.

He also earned a medical degree at Virginia that led him to serve for the last 35 years as an emergency physician at what is now Northwell Health on Long Island. Most of that time was spent in the ER helping patients in their most urgent time of need.

Bottner continues to work as an EMS medical director today, helping others to do what he does best — prepare for the unexpected and make saves when it’s vitally crucial.

Fast forward to the morning of June 29. Dan Boltja, a Cornell alum, Long Island native, and member of Team Texas, has been playing lacrosse since the age of 10. He is one of the most affable people you’ll ever have the pleasure of meeting, and one of the smartest attackmen you’ll ever watch play the game (at any age). Boltja is always in the right spot, is selfless, and is a great feeder and finisher.

Boltja is also very health conscious. He always eats right and works out religiously. That commitment to health has helped him not only play the game he loves into his 60s, but for the last 15 years, it’s also kept him active as a high school and college referee in the New York area. Boltja is one of those guys who is always willing to get out there and support the growth of the game.

On the morning before the Vail tournament started, Boltja was in the gym working out, and putting an additional 40 minutes on the Peloton to get ready for the weekend. He was prepared for the high-altitude action in Vail, situated 8,600 feet above sea level.

Looking at the brackets, and knowing how good Cloud/Boh was likely to be, none of us on Team Texas were excited to have to play them first thing on Saturday morning. While a spirited effort by both teams ensued, less than 15 minutes into the first half, Boltja didn’t feel right. He went to the sideline. He stood in the box area for a moment. Then he abruptly collapsed.

Dr. Larry Masullo, playing midfield for Team Texas, was about to go in the game when Dan went down. Larry immediately removed Dan’s helmet and checked his airway to keep it clear. Head trainer for the Vail tourney, Lisa Lear, was also there to help.

But it was Joe Bottner, in goal for Cloud/Boh, who ran to Boltja, and realizing the situation, immediately removed his gloves to ensure the proper hand placement and began performing CPR. He was doing life-saving in full goalie gear, including his helmet. It was a strange and incredible site for all of us.

As if Boltja wasn’t lucky enough to have Joe, Lisa and Larry on his side, Dr. Denis Vollmer from Team Texas immediately pitched in to assist. Add referee and retired fire chief Bill Johansson, who was also there, and Boltja had a true dream team on his side when it mattered most.

It didn’t look good for those first few minutes, and many of us were in tears, feeling helpless and fearing the worst.

But Bottner and the others calmly continued to do what they are experts at doing. An AED device was at hand and was applied. We all saw it kick-start Dan back to slow but labored breathing. The paramedics quickly appeared minutes later and whisked him off to the hospital in Vail Center, less than five minutes away.

Players on both Team Texas and Cloud/Boh were stunned. Should the game continue? The tournament organizers left that decision to us, and the Cloud/Boh team graciously understood and suggested we not continue, given the circumstances and obvious emotion of the moment. We all agreed to suspend the game.

But our next contest was scheduled less than 30 minutes later, with our Team Texas squad playing against Middlebury. At that juncture, our teammate Chip Flanagan, who has spearheaded the various Vail groups from Texas in one form or another since 1994, gathered us in a tight huddle and asked us what we wanted to do. And what would Dan do or want? Longtime teammate (and fellow Cornell alum) Bruce Bruno firmly stated: "Dan would want us to play. 100 percent."

Our cheer the rest of that day (and for the balance of the tournament) was not, "Ground Balls," "Texas," or "Win." It was a firm “Dan Boltja.”

It’s often stated by the Indigenous founders of the game that there is Medicine in playing lacrosse. There’s a healing that can take place through the spirit of play. Nothing ever felt truer to us that weekend, especially as we received steady updates of Dan’s health throughout. As members of Team Texas, we played inspired ball in his honor.

It was hard not to notice the helicopter that flew over the fields to gather Dan up. It was harder still, but encouraging, to see it fly back overhead again on its way to a hospital in Denver.

Later, tests revealed that our friend Dan had a complete blockage of the major artery in his heart. A nickname often associated with this condition is "widow maker." The chances of surviving a widow maker in the best of circumstances (you are at a hospital with gear and trained people) is less than 5 percent. Dan, with the help of an amazing team led by Bottner, at a lacrosse field in the mountains just off Highway 70 in Vail, beat those odds.

Team Texas played Cloud/Boh in the final game of the Zenmaster division the following Monday. One of our long-time Texas players, Brent Hopkins, earned MVP honors in the victory. Just two weeks earlier, Brent had lost his mom, but the next day had walked his daughter down the aisle in marriage. Inexplicable joy and sadness. That’s a theme that Joe Bottner knows well as a doctor, as a goalie, and as a teammate. And a set of feelings we all dealt with that weekend in Vail. 

Tournament co-director Matt Soran said that the sobering event that started the tournament eventually became a unifying force for all the participants, especially as news began arriving that Boltja was expected to make a full recovery.

“It was really eye-opening and it brought us together,” Soran said. “Staff, teams, whoever was up here, we really rallied with each other. Once we got through that and found out he was making good progress, we kind of just rallied behind him and that team and it kind of carried us through the week.”

Sometimes in life, as on the field, you can’t explain how things come together or transpire. But this time in Vail, in the Summer of 2024, Joe Bottner will forever be remembered with the biggest lax save he could have made.  

AN AED ON EVERY FIELD

USA Lacrosse has long advocated for leagues and teams to have an on-site AED for all games and practices. These portable and easy-to-use devices deliver potentially life-saving defibrillation therapy quickly and effectively. USA Lacrosse members receive discounted pricing on AEDs through our partner Stryker, the official AED provider of USA Lacrosse and the U.S. National teams.