Just as the NFL went through a p.r. maelstrom in 2014, from Ray Rice to Greg Hardy to concussion issues, high school football has suffered a turn in the spotlight this month. Every day brings bad news from the sublime to the tragic, from players attacking referees to family members assaulting players.
A funeral is being held Thursday morning in New Jersey for Evan Murray, who died last Friday at the age of 17 as a result of an on-field injury sustained while playing quarterback for Warren Hills Regional High School. Murray had internal bleeding caused by a lacerated spleen, and he passed away soon after collapsing on the sideline. He is the third American teenager to die from injuries suffered in an organized high school game this month, following Tyrell Cameron, 16, of Louisiana, and Ben Hamm, 16, of Oklahoma.
“The poor kid from Warren Hills passing away, that’s a tragedy,’’ Don Bosco coach Greg Toal said.
Toal has seen more than his share of injuries in 32 years as a head coach, estimating that in some seasons, as many as five young players were diagnosed with concussions — a problem echoed by Dewitt Clinton coach Howard Langley.
“I think what we’re in is the afterglow of what came to light in the NFL. The concussion issue, once it became a topic of concern, of course it’s going to trickle down to high school football,’’ Langley said. “People are going to take a good, long look at it with more scrutiny, and understandably so.’’
Roughly half of the estimated 1.1 million high school players last year got hurt, and a quarter of those injuries were concussions, according to the National High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study. That’s upwards of 100,000 developing brains exposed to trauma. There were five direct football deaths at the high school level last year, according to the National Survey of Catastrophic Football Injuries compiled annually at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Every single one was from a head injury.
These are the grimmest stories coming from the sport, which also has been damaged in perception by a string of out-of-line behavior. The extraneous violence ranges from the unhinged to the bizarre: A player from Linden, NJ, wildly swung his helmet at an opponent, and a player from California’s Salesian High smeared his foe’s face with IcyHot.
Earlier this month, two players from John Jay in San Antonio say a coach ordered them to hit referee Robert Watts during a game because of missed calls and alleged racial comments. Shocking video footage shows Victor Rojas blindsiding him and Michael Moreno spearing him. In a separate Texas high school incident, Zeke Cardenas of St. Anthony had to be restrained after he plowed into an official.
“I’d say over the years in terms of incidents off the field, they kind of happen all the time. It’s just whether you hear about it,’’ Langley said. “It’s the current storyline, so whenever something comes up, the light of the media shines on it. And there’s just more media with social networking.’’
A national hazing scandal emanated last year from Sayreville, NJ, where six players accused of sexually brutalizing former teammates were sentenced to 50 hours of community service.
“Ninety-nine-point-five percent of the people are good. You always have one bad apple. What are you going to do? As we all know, it’s not a perfect world,’’ said Toal, winner of USA Today national titles in 2009 and ’11, the first for a New Jersey team.
However, it’s not just the players making trouble, but the parents supposedly raising them. This month in Southern California, parents of players from the Lakewood team forced their way past security and into the Long Beach Millikan locker room, where they launched a full-fledged attack on Millikan players in alleged retaliation for an on-field incident.
Langley is stepping down after a successful run at Dewitt Clinton, and he said the attitudes of the parents and the drama they bring have become just too much to bear.
“That part of it is different,’’ Langley said. “Back in the day, when dads and moms sent kids to the coach, the coach was in charge. Now you have so much helicopter parenting out there, hovering around, and they’re only interested on how their kid is going and not the well-being of the program. They have so much interaction with the refs, the coaches, even other players on their own team.”
Alan Balkan, coach at New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn, has lamented the same.
“Parents believe their kid’s the best player in the country, they want to know why he’s not used this way or that,’’ Balkan said. “I don’t trust the kids as much as I used to. Now if a coach does something or says something, the kid goes right back to the parent. And we’re all in that situation. I don’t trust the kids as much as I used to, which is scary as you get older. I don’t want to jeopardize my job, pension. And it’s sad.’’
But little compares to the questions of child mortality that hang over a pastime considered in many American locales to be an essential part of the cultural fabric.
With its community reeling from Murray’s premature death, Warren Hills canceled Friday night’s homecoming festivities. The home game against Voorhees High School was postponed by one day, until Saturday.