2 High School Football Deaths Prompt Concerns

Amy Joyce received her wake-up call loud and clear the last two weeks after reading countless stories about the football-related deaths of two Southland high school players.

So at a cost of $1,500 to her family, Joyce has scheduled her son, Cody, a senior wide receiver and defensive back at Hart High in Newhall, to undergo an extensive physical examination today. Hart is one of the area’s top teams, and Cody, a top college prospect, seldom leaves the field during a game.

“I don’t think the screenings are good enough,” Amy Joyce said. “It’s something that has been bothering me for a long time. [The players’ deaths] were the thing that pushed me over the edge.”

After only two football-related deaths involving Southern California high school athletes in the previous seven years, two players have died since Sept. 13. Reseda running back Eric Hoggatt and Coronado quarterback Adrian Taufaasau died after playing in high school football games.

Further tests are planned to determine the causes of death. Although California has tougher physical examination requirements for high school football players than most states, the deaths have caused parents, school officials and medical experts to wonder if more could not be done.

“These incidents certainly make you wonder if you’re doing enough,” said Jack Hayes, executive director of the California Interscholastic Federation, which governs high school sports in the state. “I don’t think we’re going to rush to change any policies, but our health and safety committee is certainly going to be pondering this issue at their meeting next month.”

High school football-related deaths have declined nationwide over the years from a high of 34 in 1969, but at least one death has been reported every year since 1931. Some experts say that because of the sport’s nature, total safety cannot be guaranteed. Stickers on helmets warn players of the potential for paralysis or death.

“You’re dealing with a violent sport,” said Dr. Lewis Yocum, one of the area’s leading orthopedic specialists, who helped the CIF Southern Section office in Cerritos devise a standardized physical examination form. “You are never going to eliminate that.”

In recent years, the number of serious injuries and deaths has declined. Most experts attribute that to improved equipment, better education of coaches and trainers in the prevention of injuries, and more extensive physical examinations.

But Yocum said some athletes with ailments are going to slip through the cracks.

“We tried to get [doctors] away from the single line theory and have them do cardiac and muscular evaluations,” he said. “We wanted them to be doing more than simply looking at a kid and say, ‘He looks healthy,’ and OK him.

“The key is finding doctors who are qualified and the kids can afford. A lot of kids get the form and have their pediatrician or a family friend sign it. That isn’t going to do the youngster any good.”

The CIF requires an annual physical examination certifying that the student is physically fit to participate in athletics. The nature of physical examinations varies with each school district.

The National Federation of State High School Athletic Assns. in Kansas City, Mo., does not have health requirements for its member schools but recommends a physical examination at the beginning of a student’s athletic career and medical clearance each year thereafter.

“You also need awareness from parents,” Yocum said. “There are kids who have been treated for heart murmurs and will have something trigger a situation. But they don’t always tell their doctor about it. The parents don’t always tell their doctor about it. So the doctor doesn’t know that there is a physical handicap.”

In 1989, Dorsey High senior Kevin Copeland suffered a fatal heart attack in a game . Although he had passed a CIF City Section-required physical examination that summer, he collapsed a month into the season and was pronounced dead an hour later.

Copeland’s father, Ron Sr., had died of a heart attack in 1975 at the age of 28, as had his grandfather.

Millicent Copeland, Kevin’s mother, decided not to let her youngest son, Kyle, play football at Dorsey because of the family’s history.

Cardiovascular defects are particularly difficult for doctors to diagnose.

A study by cardiologist Barry J. Maron of the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation conducted between 1985 and 1995 found that 134 of 158 sudden deaths among athletes were caused by heart abnormalities. A large number of the athletes, 83, were competing in high school sports, most of them in football or basketball, when they died.

According to the study, the most common cardiovascular disease was an inherited condition known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), which cannot usually be detected in routine physical examinations.

Christine E. Seidman, a HCM researcher with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, told Science News last summer that doctors evaluating young athletes should review family histories. Those athletes who might be prone to heart disease should be more thoroughly examined, she said.

But more thorough examinations might not be affordable for some school districts or parents.

“More is done when you get to the higher levels [of competition] where more money is involved,” said Dr. C. Thomas Vangsness Jr., a sports medicine specialist at the USC School of Medicine. “CT scans and MRIs are routinely done to look for some sort of thing inside the brain. For high school players, it depends if those tests will be done. It depends if the ER doc sees something to go on. You have to understand, at USC we have a neurosurgeon on the sidelines. In a high school game, you’re not going to have that.

“In the best of all worlds, you’d get an MRI and a CT scan on every kid before the season. That way, you would be able to establish that there are no aneurysms. But, really, that’s absurd and you just can’t do that.”

Hoggatt and Taufaasau each passed physical examinations before the football season and were cleared by their schools to play.

Hoggatt, 18, took numerous hard hits in a 41-0 loss to Chatsworth High on Sept. 12. He complained of dizziness and numbness in his legs and arms and was removed from the game by a team trainer after a sideline examination. Relatives complained after his death that they had not been informed of the symptoms.

Taufaasau, 17, had been found to have epilepsy as a child, but had not had any seizures since seventh grade and had been cleared to play by a doctor. A quarterback, he was knocked unconscious in a game against Costa Mesa last Saturday after being tackled. He died the next day.

At Coronado High on Tuesday, students met with grief counselors and tearfully huddled in small groups in an attempt to cope with the shocking death of the popular athlete.

“It’s a somber day for us,” said Jeffrey Davis, principal of the 830-student school in the affluent neighborhood near the North Island Naval Air Station. “We’ve put the academic program on the back burner in an attempt to take care of the emotional well-being of our students.”

After meeting with Taufaasau’s father, the football team voted to play Friday’s game against Bishop School of La Jolla, the first game in Coronado’s new stadium. A memorial service has tentatively been set for Monday at the same football field. A fund has been established to help relatives from Samoa travel to the United States to attend.

Taufaasau, who transferred to Coronado from Long Beach Polytechnic, was a senior who dreamed of playing college football and had already received feelers from Washington State University. He was in his second year as starting quarterback.

Rene Townsend, superintendent of the Coronado school system, said she and coach Bud Mayfield have reviewed the team’s health screening and safety precautions to see if they had missed something in Taufaasau’s case.

“He underwent the same health screening all our athletes are given and was approved for football,” Townsend said. “The coach spends the majority of his budget on helmets and pads for protection. We’ve looked at everything and can’t find a reason why a strong, healthy kid should die.”

Times staff writers Rob Fernas, Chris Foster, Tony Perry and Jason Reid contributed to this story.