UCF players: Ereck Plancher died after intense mat drills

Not allowing water during practice wasn’t being tough it was just plain stupid. Bear Bryant in his book admitted he had done some dumb things in his early days. He said he just didn’t know any other way at the time. I doubt he ever got soft but some things are just foolish.

I agree that it would have been known, but sickle cell trait should not interfere with his playing football. The only time these patients experience problems is when their oxygen content is greatly decreased, as in advanced COPD, flying in an unpressurized air craft, or severe bleeding during surgery. Even then, you would not expect them to just collapse and die.

I have a friend and colleague who had no idea that he had sickle cell trait until his baby son's screening test came back positive. They were in the process of having it repeated when his brother's new baby also had a positive test. Since the parents and the children were Caucasian, everyone was tested and it was found that both brothers were carriers. My friend is a veteran of the USN and has been active all of his life with no ill effects. It has turned out to be good for me that he has sickle cell trait because he very graciously allows my hematology students to draw his blood to use for our positive control when we do sickle cell testing. They all fight over who is going to draw his blood. They know him very well because they also have him for a class and he has great veins.

The boy could have died from an unusual electrical problem with the heart. Another possibility is Marfan Syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects all of the connective tissue in the body and can lead to rupture of the aorta or other major blood vessels during vigorous exercise due to structural weakness of the vessels. Athletes that have collapsed and died are reported to have suffered from this condition. People with Marfan Syndrome tend to be tall and thin with long arms and legs. With this body type, they are often involved in athletics, especially basketball. Since the symptoms can go unnoticed, unless they have had genetic testing, these individuals have no idea that they are like ticking time bombs.

You may be referring to Sickle Cell Anemia. Sickle Cell Trait is a related malady that, rerely, causes the death of athletes Usually, the cause of death is heart arrest, caused by SC Trait...

So I assume that someone with sickle cell trait would be cleared to play football with little or no extra risk. It still seems to me that coaches should be on the look out for dehydration symptoms, and that someone with sickle cell trait would be more susceptible. It’s too early to make conclusions, either to assume a medical problem, or to clear the coaches.

Of course you’re right, it is stupid. It’s just the way it was.

By the way, I’m still not too old to be happy that I helped beat the Bear’s Crimson Tide in Lincoln in 1977, when they were very highly-ranked. It was a great sports moment for me.

I actually had the priveledge and thrill to go to lunch with Keith Jackson last year. We talked about lots of cool sports stuff he was directly involved with over his amazing career. And we talked about that 1977 Husker/Tide game, and he remembered it well. He said Bear Bryant and Tom Osborne were 2 of his favorite coaches of all time, and he shared several fun memories of the game (he did the play-by-play on national TV for ABC, along with Frank Broyles). Amazing he had a recollection of it, since he’d done hundreds and hundreds.

Anyway, maybe the best part of this memory you’ve conjured for me is that a couple guys from one of NU’s frats stole Bear’s famous houndstooth hat! Right off his head, as he walked (angrily) through hundreds of pandemonious Husker fans—accompanied by 2 state troopers no less—to the center of the field to shake Coach Osborne’s hand!

The famous hat still allegedly occupies a place of honor in the front room of this particular frat house in Lincoln, enshrined in glass along with a picture one of the bros took of the deed occurring!

So thanks for the Bear Bryant reference—brought back a fun memory!

lol

If he had sickle cell I’m pretty sure it would have been known and he wouldn’t have been playing football.

Not true. Check this story about Ryan Clark from the Steelers.

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"Freak thing" doesn't begin to describe what happened in Denver, not more than a couple of days after Clark's wife, Yonka, joked to him, "Hey, why don't you come back with your spleen intact this time?"

When he previously had played in Denver while with the Washington Redskins, Clark had been diagnosed with a spleen contusion following the game.

Turns out he was misdiagnosed.

And, just like in 2005, the high altitude in Denver, coupled with the sickle-cell trait that Clark has, caused his blood to sickle during the Steelers' Oct. 21 game against the Broncos.

His blood vessels burst this time, Clark said, and the resulting loss of oxygen to his spleen killed parts of it.

"Once it died," Clark said, "bacteria said, 'Hey, that's a good place to go chill.'"

Clark felt well enough after the Steelers' 31-28 loss to the Broncos to call his wife, which always has been his post-game ritual.

But Yonka Clark later got a call from one of his teammates who said Clark had to be taken off the team bus and whisked away to a hospital because he had been experiencing such discomfort. That turned out to be only the beginning of their harrowing ordeal. The worse Clark felt after he returned to Pittsburgh the more, it seemed, the battery of tests he took showed that nothing was wrong with him. "I was trying to be really respectful of the doctors and the trainers, and they tell you that you're going to be OK and sometimes I was kind of made to feel like I was milking it," Clark said. "I'm sure that wasn't their intentions, but they were talking to me like 'You're really OK. I don't know why you feel like you can't do certain things.' "

Snip

Frustrated and scared, Clark sought another opinion in the middle of November. When he told the doctor about his symptoms, Clark immediately was sent to the hospital.

He had his spleen removed after an infection was discovered -- the operation took more than four hours because his spleen was in such bad shape -- and a couple of weeks later his gall bladder came out, too.

Many black athletes have Sickle Trait and play sports all their lives. It is rare for there to be problems but it does happen. An early symptom is leg cramps. Not all cramps are Sickle Trait6 related though.

I am sad to say that my school lost a promising young athlete in 1985 due to Sickle Trait. FSU lost one a few years back.