High school football player dies after game
HOMER, N.Y. (AP) - October 15, 2011
The fatal injury occurred Friday night during the third quarter
of a varsity game in Homer, south of Syracuse. A lineman on the
visiting team from Phoenix High School was hit hard and lay face
down after the play.
"The coaches and trainers went over. He was talking. He rolled
on his back by himself," said Phoenix School District
Superintendent Judy Belfield. The boy was able to sit up after the
play, but he complained of a very bad headache and collapsed when
he tried to stand, she said.
An ambulance took the player to a hospital, and he was being
transferred to a larger medical center in Syracuse when his
condition deteriorated, Belfield said. The ambulance turned around,
but doctors were unable to save the student's life.
The teen's name wasn't immediately released out of concern that
not all of his relatives had been notified of the death.
Team coaches didn't learn until after the game that the player's
injuries were severe, Belfield said. She said the school community
was distraught, and that officials would open the high school
Saturday to students or staff who wanted to talk about what had
happened.
"It just one of those freak things," she said. "The Homer
players have to be feeling just as much sadness."
The Homer Central School District posted a message on its
website Saturday morning saying the community had been "deeply
saddened and shares in the grief of the Phoenix School Community."
Head injuries in football have been a subject of intense
scrutiny in recent years, with some medical evidence emerging to
suggest that the equipment players use may not be enough to protect
them from serious, long-term injuries.
A handful of high school students suffer fatal on-field injuries
every fall, according to the University of North Carolina's
National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research. A player at
Frostburg State University, in Maryland, died after suffering a
head injury in a practice in August.
Belfield said the Phoenix school district sends its football
helmets out to be reconditioned every year, and that each has to
pass a safety inspection before the season begins.
"Over the course of the past few years, they have really tried
to improve the protection of the head. But there is always a risk
of injury or of death," she said. She added that an investigation
would be conducted to try to determine what went wrong.