Posted on 07/12/2019 7:17:52 AM PDT by SMGFan
On Sept. 27, 2008, Dillon Romain and T.J. Franzese, running backs who shared the backfield at Don Bosco Prep, played the game of their lives.
Taking on six-time national champion De La Salle in a nationally televised game, Franzese led Don Bosco in receiving and hauled in a critical third-quarter touchdown, while Romain rushed for a game-high 150 yards and a score.
Their performances led the team to a 23-21 victory and launched the Don Bosco dynasty into the national spotlight.
A decade after that celebrated game, Franzese and Romain are dead.
Franzese died April 19, 2017.
Romain died two years later to the day.
Kurt Schmitz, an offensive lineman on the team, is dead, too. In all, nine former Don Bosco athletes have died in the past five years, seven of whom played for the school’s national powerhouse football program.
All of the nine were 29 or younger.
“It’s a lot of kids,” said Kevin Roche, the father of Brian Roche, a former Don Bosco football player who died in 2016. “The first thing any normal person would do is say, ‘What’s going on here? There’s something odd. This is atypical.’ And it is. And I can’t explain it.”
More than a dozen interviews with Don Bosco officials, family members of the deceased and former athletes from the school do little to explain the numbers. There is certainly no evidence of any relationship between Don Bosco and the tragedies. Still, the rash of deaths that has hit the close-knit, all-boys school of about 830 students in Bergen County is mysterious and alarming, parents said.
NJ Advance Media confirmed causes of death — a drug overdose, a car accident and a seizure that led to a heart attack — for four of the former student-athletes.
(Excerpt) Read more at expo.nj.com ...
Coincidence...and poor lifestyle choices.
How does the mortality rate of these athletes (those who died as a percentage of all the participants in the athletic programs over the same period of time) with the mortality rate of males in the same demographic categories across the broader neighborhood?
you would not be the best choice for investigative reporting. /s
Football-related brain injury seems to be a factor for at least one, according to the article.
Roid use or some other performance-enhancing stuff back in the day?
Good thinking .
what is life expectancy during the ten years after graduation for students. Do the have stats for past 10 years for all high school in US? ( Well, many inner city youth many have passed due to being in Chicago etc)
Straight Outta Don Bosco.
New Jersey stories all sound alike....
Yes, at length. As if it was more significant for all the deaths than is the broader pattern of opioid abuse.
Everyone dies at one time or another.Drug use, driving while impaired, other poor life choices, can hasten the time of death.
Drugs, Anabolic Steroids
If the mortality rate for football players in a certain age range was significantly higher than for comparable non-football-players in the same city, that might indicate a causation factor.
On the other hand, it could just be a statistical coincidence or a reflection of larger trends.
I think that would be a pretty good guess, give the scarce information given here.
There were no official causes of death?
For the other 5 I mean.
Rob Kenny - Bingampton Rangers went there - died in a car accident a few years ago - going to work.
Even just looking at that data in one neighborhood is still too small of a sample size. Maybe look at all the statistics for that group in all of New Jersey, or in the whole state excluding inner city areas.
Yes, a bigger sample would be more informative.
If they had been smokers they would’ve been unable to play ball but would have lived past 30.
I’m gonna say it.
New Jersey residency.
Some of the best athletes we ever had were smokers.
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