High school football player collapses from heat, dies

[KindaCool]

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

TLANTA -- A 15-year-old high school football player died Tuesday from heat stroke after collapsing one day earlier following an offseason workout.

Coroner Stephen Boyle said Tyler L. Davis, a rising junior at Rockdale County High School, was taken to the county hospital before being transferred to Children's Health Care of Atlanta at Egleston, where he died.

"He walked off the field on his own power, then collapsed on his way to the locker room," James Ginn, spokesman for the Rockdale County Public Schools, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "That's when they called 911."

Rockdale County is in the eastern suburbs of Atlanta.

Ginn said the district is investigating the death and the school has canceled all football-related activities "until further notice."

Monday's workout session was voluntary because formal football practices do not begin statewide until Wednesday, Ginn said.

Rockland County head coach Lee Carter was distraught and said he wasn't doing well when reached on his cellphone by the Journal-Constitution. Carter declined to comment on Tyler's death.

The football players lifted weights indoors for about an hour before heading out to the field to perform running and passing drills. Water was available to them throughout the training session, and they were outside with frequent breaks from about 5 p.m. to about 6:45 p.m., he said.

After practice, the players returned to the locker room, where the boy collapsed, Ginn said.

The school has brought in grief counselors to work with students, faculty and staff, he said.

Georgia, like much of the rest of the nation, has been sweltering under blistering heat.

Temperatures hovered in the mid-90s throughout the state Monday and Tuesday, with the heat index between 100 and 105 degrees.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

[Ranger Mom]

Wow.....ANOTHER one!!

Is this something we will see someday at the HS level??

Thermometer pill for football players
In the 1980s, NASA developed a wireless thermometer-in-a-pill to keep tabs on the body temperature of astronauts. Now, some American football players are swallowing the pills to protect themselves from potentially-deadly heatstroke. The thermometer pill is part of HQ Inc.'s "Coretemp" line of "miniaturized data recorder(s)." From IEEE Spectrum:
Once swallowed, the multivitamin-size pill acts as an internal thermometer, providing continuous readings of a player's body temperature, which can be picked up by a sensor placed against the small of the player's back. Players take the pills a couple of hours before the start of practice, allowing the capsules time to reach an athlete's small intestine, where core body temperature readings accurate to within 0.1 °C can be taken.

A year after the (Minnesota Vikings player Korey Stringer died of heatstroke, in 2003), Philadelphia Eagles player Tra Thomas was saved from a similar fate during summer training camp when a radio pill reported that he had a core body temperature of 40.9 °C and trainers pulled him off the field. "He hadn't shown any signs of heat stress," said Derek Boyko, the Eagles' director of football media services. "Who knows if, without the device, the training staff would have known he was in danger before it was too late."

[44INAROW]

Sad situation for all involved. Cause for concern every year at this time. My prayers go out to Tyler's family, the team and community.
Since school was out in May, my son and his buddies have been lifting weights, doing situps and running nearly every weekday in the morning and again at 5:30 in the evening, so hopefully, their bodies are conditioned to handle this horrible heat and humidity. All a parent can do is hope and pray they've taken all precautions necessary to prevent this tragedy. Drinking fluilds the day they start is WAY too late. The time to start hydrating is days before.

[Phil C]

Very sad. Prayers for all concerned. It is most important with the heat to drink plenty of water.