We've told you a lot about the former Ohio State All-American and NFL Pro Bowl tackler whose wrongful death lawsuit created an institute to prevent sudden death in athletes.
Now, our Athletes At Risk project brings you how that institute and Ohio began working together to make sidelines safer.
In sports, being tough usually means mentally or physically. In sports health and safety, it's a term used by the Korey Stringer Institute (KSI) that stands for "Teaming Up For Sports Safety."
Christianne Eason is the president of sport safety for KSI.
“So this summer, we hosted a virtual meeting with Ohio,” Eason said. “We had some great attendance.”
KSI focused on three portions of the OHSAA's state health and safety policies:
- Heat acclimatization
- Wet bulb globe thermometers
- Emergency action plans.
“Ohio currently has a law on the books that’s specific to emergency management plans for schools,” Eason said. “That language is very vague and it tends to focus more on the situations that would occur during a normal school day.”
That covers procedures like what to do in a fire drill or an active shooter. KSI focused on venue-specific sports emergency action plans.
“We talked a lot about how emergencies that happen during the regular school day are very different than emergencies that can happen after school, specific to athletics,” Eason said.
When you talk about new policies and procedures, there's always the question of costs.
“From an emergency action plan perspective, the only cost is the time that’s associated with drafting them,” Eason said. “I don’t want to minimize that, but from a budgetary plan, an emergency action plan does not cost a school anything. So it’s really the time that goes into creating it.”
Local 12 asked Ohio High School Athletic Association Executive Director Doug Ute what it would take to have conversations to get these no-cost policies in place.
“Well, I think that the awareness piece to our member schools is certainly out there,” Ute said. “I shouldn’t say everybody, but I’d assume the majority of people and, certainly, everybody has made changes, particularly where you looked.”
Dr. Samantha Scarneo-Miller said awareness isn't enough. She's been an expert in cases involving athletes who have died.
“Yes, it’s disheartening to have these conversations with states or high schools to say, ‘This is a zero-cost policy. Why are you not doing it?’" Scarneo-Miller said. “But the worst part about all of this is having a conversation with a parent telling them that their kid did not have to die because of a zero-cost policy. They could have had that policy and it could have helped them.”
That zero-cost policy is at the center of a wrongful death lawsuit involving Northern Kentucky soccer player Matthew Mangine Jr.
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