Eight Feet Deep

Talk about side­lined! Even if the turf on Rebel Field in Evadale, Texas, dries suf­fi­ciently this evening after pound­ing rain­fall, the sta­dium will remain silent from the bus­tle of the grid­iron. That is because the sched­uled bat­tle between the Evadale Rebels and the Chester Yel­low­jack­ets has been can­celed. In fact, the Yel­low­jack­ets’ remain­ing sea­son has been canceled.

Foot­ball ended for Chester on Oct. 23 after what turned out to be their final game, which was against High Island. In that game, seven Yel­low­jacket play­ers suf­fered season-ending injuries, accord­ing to the Beau­mont Enter­prise. With a stu­dent body of 58 attend­ing Chester High School — located in a town of only 256 about 90 miles north­east of Hous­ton — the foot­ball team is com­prised of 20 of the 26 boys who attend classes there. Another stu­dent broke his foot the week before. You do the math.

Yes, the Yel­low­jack­ets could still field a team pro­vided no one got hurt in the last two games. A team with a total squad of 12 also would not pro­vide any rest for the weary. I can’t speak for the six Chester stu­dents who don’t play. Kids have all kinds of rea­sons why they don’t get into orga­nized sports. The clos­est I got was as a var­sity foot­ball and bas­ket­ball equip­ment man­ager. Nev­er­the­less, the coach decided it best to end the sea­son while the school still had some able bod­ies for bas­ket­ball sea­son. That’s a joke, although I real­ize a bad one. The result was that the Yel­low­jack­ets for­feited its final two games.

The abrupt end­ing to the sea­son may have left some kids and fans heart­bro­ken but the coach’s deci­sion was both with­out recourse and smart.

Can­cel­ing was smart because had more play­ers suf­fered inca­pac­i­tat­ing injuries a whole raft of wrath might have been heaped upon the coach and administration’s head like play­ers scram­bling for a goal-line fum­ble. Soci­ety has become less tol­er­ant with the idea of “play­ing hurt.” And with recent hear­ings about foot­ball brain injuries suf­fered by NFL play­ers — the pros also being shown to influ­ence youth foot­ball safety lev­els – the idea of “shak­ing off” an injury seems des­tined for such dis­cred­ited med­ical prac­tices as “bleed­ing” some­one for var­i­ous illnesses.

One must rec­og­nize the dif­fer­ence between trau­matic brain injury as well as other poten­tially deadly and dis­abled syn­dromes related to con­cus­sions, and the nor­mal bro­ken bones and  dis­lo­ca­tions which are com­mon in high school foot­ball. Even con­cus­sions, or get­ting one’s “bell rung,” are not unusual. Two Chester play­ers report­edly suf­fered con­cus­sions while the rest of the injuries along with a host of bro­ken  bones and dis­lo­ca­tions, accord­ing to Beau­mont TV sta­tion KFDM. The Chester coach called the num­ber of injuries incurred freak accidents.

But even ortho­pe­dic injuries these day in foot­ball at the high school level have been under scrutiny along with head injuries, all wrapped up under the cat­e­gory of sports safety.

A num­ber of fac­tors bring safety to the fore­front of sports in gen­eral such as the size and ath­leti­cism of youth who work­out on weights and some of whom take illicit steroids. Pro­tec­tive sports gear has also improved as has emer­gency med­ical care. Some notable cases, how­ever,  exhibit tragic holes in pro­tec­tion from injuries.

The case of Will Ben­son is a par­tic­u­lar exam­ple of gaps in safety.

Ben­son was a 17-year-old quar­ter­back for St. Stephen’s Epis­co­pal School in Austin who died after suf­fer­ing cere­bral hem­or­rhage dur­ing a game in 2002. Ben­son col­lapsed and was looked at by the team’s trainer and doc­tor but no ambu­lance or emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cians were sta­tioned on the scene. Prob­lems with the ambu­lance find­ing and access­ing the patient were rea­sons almost a half-hour elapsed between the time Ben­son col­lapsed and was rolled into emer­gency surgery.

It wasn’t until 2007 that Benson’s dad was able to con­vince Texas leg­is­la­tors that sports safety needed improve­ment and “Will’s Law” was passed among which pro­vi­sions include a require­ment of safety train­ing for coaches and trainers.

I have to admit that I read about Will Benson’s tragic case for the first time today. I sup­pose I have become some­what numb fol­low­ing news of kids dying from sports injuries. What shocks me most is that in 45 years of watch­ing high school foot­ball I can’t remem­ber see­ing  a game that did not have an ambu­lance stand­ing by. This was even the case back in the day when EMTs — which I was cer­ti­fied as for 10 years — was just another unknown acronym and funeral homes usu­ally oper­ated the ambu­lances. This is even in the small­est of East Texas towns in which I grew up.

The machismo of the still over­whelm­ingly male sport of foot­ball has long dic­tated tough­ness as a rite of pas­sage. One must decide whether such con­cepts are all they’re made out to be. But as was empha­sized in the macho pro­fes­sion of fire­fight­ing in which I was involved some five years one can’t help some­one in need if you are unable to show up. Trans­la­tion: Don’t drive like a bat out of hell and all crazy en route to an emergency.

If the log­i­cal exten­sion is taken for foot­ball, you can’t play if you’re hurt really bad. That can be taken for what it’s worth if logic can be applied amongst the emo­tional world of football.