They kept a cool head — while warming hearts.
A pair of New Jersey youngsters out for their first-ever sled ride crashed through an icy pond — but were saved by a group of heroic teenage boys, who formed a human chain and pulled the tykes out of the freezing waters.
Dad Rich Heid had taken his kids, Olivia, 8, and 4-year-old RJ, for their first taste of the slopes at the Beacon Hill Country Club in Atlantic Highlands on Thursday afternoon when disaster almost struck.
“We went to the smaller hill with no other kids to be safe,” Heid, 35, told The Post on Sunday. “They went down once and loved it.”
On the second run down, however, the siblings “kind of ricocheted from a tree and the sled turned, and it was backwards and took off.”
“I grabbed a small sled and went after them. I was yelling ‘Jump off! Jump off!’ [but] of course they couldn’t,” the dad said.
“Luckily, those five teenagers were at the bottom of the pond.”
The boys — all freshmen at Middletown High School North — had also come to Beacon Hill to sled and stopped to see if the pond had frozen over when they heard Heid’s chilling screams.
“I heard the father yelling ‘Jump off!’” recalled Kiernan Foley, 14, who is a member of the local Boy Scout troop. “The sled was going fast.”
The hero high-schooler immediately leapt into the water and waded out to reach the terrified youngsters, losing a snow boot in the process.
“I picked up RJ and handed him to my friend,” then, “I grabbed Olivia and … I was able to get her up and handed her off,” Foley said.
His buddies — Ryan Day, 15, and 14-year-olds Drew Scalice, Joseph Dietrich and Tyler Armagan — helped get both kids to safety and comforted them until their parents were able to race down the hill.
“I saw Kieran hop in and I went in after him,” said Day. “I took RJ from Kieran and handed him to his mom.”
The youngsters’ mother, Stephanie Irlbeck, 35, recalled “screaming” as her kids careened down the hill and landed some seven feet into the pond.
“Kieran just walked right in and got them,” Irlbeck said. “All the boys helped… they are amazing.”
Little Olivia agreed.
“I was soaking wet, freezing and scared,” she said. “The boys really helped us.”
The teens’ heroic act may have prevented an unthinkable tragedy, as Patch first reported earlier Sunday.
“If RJ [had fallen] under the ice, this is a whole other story,” Irlbeck noted.She later penned a tribute to the boys on a Middletown community Facebook page, writing: “Not only did they stop a potentially catastrophic situation they didn’t even want anything in return.”
“Thank you. THANK YOU for having such AMAZING KIDS,” Irlbeck added, addressing the teens’ parents.
When discussing the harrowing rescue, the boys stayed ever-humble — and waved off any suggestions of a reward.
“It’s what you do… You do a good deed, you don’t do it for rewards,” said Foley.
Day was equally modest.
“I don’t want a reward,” he said, “I feel good we helped the kids.”
Another teen, Dietrich, added, “We were just doing a good deed.
“We were worried about the kids. We’re all happy they are OK.”
Heid said the group of teens had “restored [the parents’] faith in humanity.
“Those kids are amazing, so humble, so helpful,” the dad said.
“They wouldn’t take anything… They just said they were happy to help.”