OT: High school football player dies; seventh in USA this year
Very sad story out of Chicago this morning.
17 year old Andre Smith has died after suffering "blunt force head injuries due to a football accident." He is the SEVENTH high school football player to die in America this year. In 2014, eleven high school football players died, five of whom's deaths where caused by injuries directly related to game action.
As much as we harp on brain injuries in college and the NFL, what's going on in high school football right now is much worse. These kids simply do not receive adequate care for contact football and people are dying almost every week because of it, and unfortunately the fix for this is unclear given the general lack of central control over high school football. It's just a sad state of affairs at this level, unacceptable really, and something is going to need to be done fast or the game risks major (and in that case necessary) gameplay changes.
October 26th, 2015 at 3:34 PM ^
October 26th, 2015 at 4:03 PM ^
I thought people here, that upon editing post, that they noted the EDIT. I see this posts title and body have changed with no note of the edit.
OP could have noted: "EDIT: reduced hyperbole, increased sermonizing" at least.
October 26th, 2015 at 9:38 PM ^
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October 26th, 2015 at 4:22 PM ^
October 26th, 2015 at 4:52 PM ^
Maybe the issue is the Dr's physical needs to be updated to address issues specific to football.
October 26th, 2015 at 5:25 PM ^
October 26th, 2015 at 8:39 PM ^
or diminish the loss
But I'm pretty sure more high school football players will die in car accidents during the football season.
October 26th, 2015 at 10:06 PM ^
Our society has a tendency to blow things out of proportion as usual. I played football my entire child hood through high school and played semi professionally for a few years in my early twenties. The issue is not always head trauma, or kids getting the shit knocked out of them etc... The issue is that many kids die from non contact related issues, such as over exertion in practice, or underlying health issues that go undiagnosed that can kill you if you over exert yourself.
The harsh reality is this game is brutal and it is not for everyone. Kids need more than just a basic physical before being allowed to play and most kids need to be developed before hitting the field. The main issue is technique is not taught correctly and there are a lot of coaches who spend to much time game prepping and running plays in practice when they need to be coaching technique, over and over and
Here are two supporting facts to prove my point, deaths in sports are no discriminate and many are heart related.
http://www.swata.org/statistics/
http://www.today.com/health/teen-athletes-sudden-deaths-spur-call-heart…
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/03/11/teen.heart.deaths/
October 26th, 2015 at 11:06 PM ^
Good point. I was going to bring up something similar. What was the cause of death in each of these cases? Without looking at the cause of death we might be left with something like cancelling homecoming parades because at least 4 people have died this year watching one.