"Morning Papers"

The Rooster

"Okeydoke"

High School football season is beginning.

September 27. 2015
By Josh Barnett

On the same day (click here) that the high school football community in New Jersey was mourning the death of Warren Hills Regional quarterback Evan Murray, Bartlesville, Okla., was celebrating the life of Ben Hamm.
The funeral for Hamm, 16, was held Saturday morning. Hamm, a junior from Bartlesville’s Wesleyan Christian School, died Sept. 19 from injuries he suffered in game eight days earlier.
The death of Murray and Hamm follow the death of Franklin Parrish (Winnsboro, La.) player Tyrell Cameron in a Sept. 4 game in Louisiana. Late Friday night, Franklin Parish beat Richwood in overtime, its first victory since Cameron’s death.
According to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina, five high school players died last season of causes directly related to football such as head and spine injuries. Seven more high school players died from indirect causes such as heatstroke.
“This put a lot of things in perspective,” Franklin Parish coach Barry Sebren told USA TODAY High School Sports on Sunday. “You have to try to learn from those moments and take the opportunity to recognize that this thing it’s serious. Some things you thought were serious before are not really. These situations help you understand what’s important and what’s not important.”...

Young men are dying of brain trauma in high school. I think the President needs to get involved and halt the high school football season to evaluate what is going on with these young men. Our teenagers are traumatized. It needs to be addressed.


October 18, 2015
By Patrick Redford

Last night, junior Cam’ron Matthews of Alto High School in Alto, (click here) Texas died after collapsing near the end of the first half of his school’s game against Carlisle High. According to NBC, Matthews complained of dizziness and suffered a seizure on the sidelines. Matthews was airlifted out of the stadium and taken to a hospital in Tyler, about 50 miles away.

The school made the following announcement last night:

Cam’ron Matthews, passed away Saturday, October 17th. He was a junior and a member of the Yellow Jacket Varsity Football team. Please keep the Matthews family, our school and community in your prayers....

The year 2015-2016 is proving to be a repeat of 2014-2015. While there were some deaths related to heat, the majority of the deaths last year and this year are due to head trauma.

November 30, 2014
By Erik Brady

..."No one should die playing the game they love," (click here) his mother told USA TODAY Sports.
Penny Gilbert and Dean Janes want to spare other parents their pain. That's why they sat at a conference table in their attorneys' office here recently, telling stories about their strong-willed son and his life and death.
"We don't want to take away football," Gilbert said. "We just want to make it safer. We don't want Damon to be just a statistic."
The statistics are damning: Janes is one of eight players last year whose deaths were directly related to high school football, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at the University of North Carolina. This season, five players have died of causes directly related to football, such as head and spine injuries.
Nine high school football players died last season of indirect causes, such as heatstroke. There have been nine more such deaths this season, seven from high school.
And yet for those same seasons, there have been no fatalities directly related to pro, semipro, college and youth football. Which raises the question: Why are high school football players dying at a time when players from other levels are not?
"We're trying to wrap our minds around that," said Kevin Guskiewicz, founding director of the Matthew Gfeller Sport-Related Traumatic Brain Injury Research Center at North Carolina and who also directs the catastrophic injury center's traumatic injury division.
High school football players suffer three times as many catastrophic injuries as college players — meaning deaths, permanent disability injuries, neck fractures and serious head injuries, among other conditions, according to a 2007 study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine.
Three high school football players died in one week at the end of September and beginning of October, including Tom Cutinella, 16, whose undefeated Shoreham-Wading River High School team from Long Island, N.Y., claimed an emotional victory in the Class IV championship game on Sunday. The Suffolk County Football Coaches Association has created a memorial award in his name....