Someone from a junior varsity high school football team in California was declared dead on Wednesday, two weeks after getting hurt badly while making a tackle during a game.
A story from the Los Angeles Times said that the 16-year-old South East High School player was taken to the emergency room by ambulance. The rest of the Aug. 23 game against Maywood was then called off.
Eric Jaimes, the principal of South East, sent a message to the school community on Wednesday saying, “On behalf of our entire school community, I want to offer my deepest condolences.” Right now, we ask that the privacy of those who have been affected be respected. This is a hard time. Please know that everyone at our school is here for you.
“Everyone at South East High School is important, and this loss affects all of us.” Any kid who might need extra help can talk to a crisis counselor at our school. Students can also talk to teachers, counselors, or other school staff to find out more about the available support tools. When someone close to us dies, it can hurt us a lot.
You can find South East High School in the Los Angeles Unified School District. It plays in the CIF LA City Section.
It was reported that the player had died on the same day that the Baltimore Sun talked about new safety worries following the deaths of six high school football players across the country in August alone.
Five of those people died. Two were in Alabama, one each in Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, and Kansas. Four of those deaths were caused by the heat.
Concerns about football safety have been around since the beginning of the game. The National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research has been keeping track of deaths from football games since 1931. Most of them have happened in middle schools and high schools.
A report from the NCCSIR says that six people in that age group died in ALL OF 2023.
The National Federation of State High School Associations has done a lot of research and come up with a lot of ways to keep heat-related problems from happening. Even though Korey Stringer died in 2001, the Korey Stringer Institute is still a place where people can get help for heat stroke.
The death of Morgan Academy (Ala.) quarterback Caden Tellier on August 24 from a head injury brought to light the ongoing worries about contact with the brain.