High school football player dies of heat stroke

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/news/story?id=2536630

I remember playing for my varsity high school team around this time last year. The pre season workouts were extremely tough. But in this case, the workouts were actually voluntary.

 

Or as voluntary as high-school workouts get, which is to say not voluntary at all.

 

When I saw the post, first thing I thought was "Georgia"....
Surprise...

 

Eight years ago, I worked at a paper where a guy died from heat stroke. It was just sad.

Sharp kid, didn't have water withheld ... a memory I'd just as soon forget. Problem is, I won't.

 

As usual, ESPN.com takes work others have done, in this case rubbish work by AP -- the kid was 6-1, 300 pounds, according to reporting done by Derrick Mahome and others at the AJC. Then ESPN slaps ESPN.com services at the top, and then has the nerve to tag the story with "The Associated Press contributed to this report."

A very sad story. And this boy is just the first.

 

First of what? Plenty of high school kids have died playing football. Why do you think mothers want their kids playing soccer?

 

First kid this summer. Oh, actually, I think there was a kid from Kentucky last month.

At first I thought the kid might have been a Katrina refugee, because AP indicated funeral arrangements are being done in Columbus, Miss.

And, by the way, the AP writer interviewed a parking meter reader about the despotic heat at the close of the dead football player story. Un-fucking-believable.

 

Here it is, for the record:

No!

 

Incoming freshman in Virginia last month as well.

 

Whenever a football coach says that he wishes it were hotter during training camp, don't you just want to beat the shit out of him?

 

But, hasn't there always been kids that have died in extreme summer heat - going back decades? Or is this a relatively new thing? Seems to me it just wasn't publicized quite as rapidly as it is nowadays.

Case in point:

My Dad played high school football and he tells of stories where coaches withheld water throughout the ENTIRE practice; where kids were throwing up and passing out. And my Dad played in the early 1970s. With the water mandates in today's day and age, and the two-a-days, with early mornings and late evenings ... you'd think kids have it easy compared to the horror stories my Dad tells.

Is my Dad exaggerating?

 

Some of these kids simply don't belong on the field in the shape they're in. You have to wonder how in the hell some of them pass the physicals. There weren't 300-pound defensive tackles in high school in the 1970s and 1980s.

In Mississippi and Alabama they used to call them water cows, basically holes drilled into a large garden hose, and it was good enough to do the job.