Teen Lost His Life in the Game He Loved

Susan and Tiva Bussarakons were in the stands when it happened, when their second son rushed toward the soccer ball, a fearless high school kid defending a goal. They had watched him do it countless times before.

They weren’t watching a moment later when the 14-year-old they treasured collided head-on with a player from the opposing team, when his chin snapped back, his spine shook and he crumpled to the ground.

In an accident school and youth soccer officials called “freak” and “unprecedented,” the popular Esperanza High School freshman who idolized his soccer-playing older brother and his elderly grandmother alike died on the field Monday surrounded by his parents and teammates.

Tuesday, the Orange County coroner’s office said Chad Bussarakons died of “cervical spinal trauma from a blunt force impact to the chin”--his brain stem cut off from his spinal cord when the other player’s head slammed against him. Three parents of other kids on the team, all off-duty paramedics, were at Chad’s side in minutes, and an ambulance rushed to the scene.

But Chad never moved from the spot where he collapsed.

At the sand-colored stucco house at the end of a Yorba Linda cul-de-sac where the Bussarakons family mourned Tuesday, no one was blaming Chad’s death on the sport he loved. Soccer, family members gathered around a fading Christmas tree agreed, had given the boy nothing but delight.

“We didn’t allow him to play football because of the danger and the mentality,” Susan Bussarakons said. “But soccer is a wonderful sport. This was something we did every weekend for the past 10 years; it was just built into our lives.”

Soccer Fatalities ‘Extremely Rare’

Outside, neighborhood teenagers placed flowers on the sidewalk in front of the family’s home. Soccer players and other students at the Anaheim school where Chad had been liked by classmates and teachers alike spoke softly to guidance counselors about the loss of a friend.

As word of the accident spread among leaders of state youth soccer organizations, officials accustomed to more mundane injuries on the soccer field--broken legs, sprained ankles, jammed fingers--shook their heads in disbelief.

With national and local governing bodies for high school sports closed for the holidays, current statistics on fatalities and injuries were not immediately available.

“Fatalities in soccer are extremely rare,” said Dr. Gary Green, a sports medicine expert at the UCLA School of Medicine.

George Koontz, men’s soccer coach at UC Irvine and director of coaching for the California Youth Soccer Assn., said the death should not scare parents away from the sport.

“This is a very, very sad and tragic situation,” Koontz said. “But it is a very, very isolated incident. I know a lot of former professional football and baseball players who have had their kids play soccer because it is so safe.”

Ray Horspool, president of the California Youth Soccer Assn., an extra-curricular league that Chad also played in, called the death “unprecedented.”

“It’s an absolute tragedy,” Horspool said. Soccer is “primarily a below-the-waist sport,” Horspool said. “We have never had a fatality in CYSA that is play-related.”

Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified school district officials, counselors and a specially trained crisis unit met with team members and their parents Tuesday. The next two games of the freshman-sophomore soccer team that Chad had been an integral part of were canceled. And school administrators mulled the possibility of a special assembly or memorial service when the rest of the student body returns for classes Tuesday.

“He’s just one of the coolest guys ever,” said Morgan Mackay, 14, who said Chad was her first boyfriend when the two were in fifth grade.

On Tuesday, she spoke of Chad at first in the present tense, then slipped into the past tense. From her purse she pulled a small white teddy bear Chad had given her. Laughing, her eyes swollen from crying, she recalled fondly the times she toilet-papered his house in a teenage-style effort to win his attention.

“He was just so caring and nice. He was a good guy,” Morgan said. “When I look back on my childhood, I think of Chad. I just can’t think of him as not here.”

Steele Kizerian, 14, one of Chad’s best friends since first grade, spent much of the afternoon with the mourning family.

“He was always looking for an opportunity to serve people,” Steele said of his friend, who along with playing soccer, sang in the school choir, maintained better than average grades, and found time to surf, skateboard and bike.

“At school he would walk around and try to find people all alone, people who kids said weren’t ‘cool’ and try to talk to them,” Steele said. “He didn’t want people to feel left out.”

‘We Were All Praying He Would Come Back’

A soccer dad, Tony Anderson, 52, who was in the stands at the time of the collision but didn’t see it, said Chad was close to the family.

Chad “really brought out the fun side of my son,” he said. “He was spontaneous. He introduced my son to cologne.” Then Anderson laughed, “The car would wreak when they had their clashing colognes.”

Anderson became overwhelmed when he recalled Monday’s accident.

“I stood there on the field, praying he would come back,” he said. “The paramedics were working on him feverishly. We were all praying he would come back. On TV they always come back. But that just didn’t happen last night.”

This type of spinal injury occurs very rarely in soccer, Green said, more often in football, swimming and diving.

“Protective equipment would not protect you from this type of injury,” he said.

At the Bussarakons’ house, family members and friends hugged each other and cried over the sudden loss of the boy who since the death of his grandfather in August, had put out a monthly family newsletter and insisted on monthly family get-togethers.

“He said, ‘Mom, we can’t just come together for birthdays and holidays, it’s not enough,’ ” Susan Bussarakons said. “So he started it, and like everything else, he kept it up.”

Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. Thursday at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 441 S. Fairmont Blvd., Anaheim.

Times staff writer Bill Shaikin contributed to this story.