Fountain Valley Prep Player Dies

A 16-year-old football player from Huntington Beach who collapsed and died while warming up during practice this week had no history of medical problems but was suffering from a lingering cold on the day he died, his mother said Tuesday.

Steven “Scotty” Lang, a junior lineman for Fountain Valley High, had completed six 20-yard wind sprints Monday when he went down on one knee and then collapsed, stunning his coaches and some 80 teammates looking on.

As first the coach, then two trainers and finally paramedics tried to revive Lang, his mother raced onto the field.

“One of the girls from church called me at home and told me he had fainted on the field,” Cindy Lang said during an emotional interview at her Huntington Beach home. “Scotty’s coach called me while I was driving over there . . . and he said he’s still on the field.”

When she arrived, paramedics were working on her son, doing compressions on his chest, Cindy Lang recalled. “They asked me if I wanted to ride with him and I said I wanted to be with my boy, and I prayed,” she said.

She rode with her son in an ambulance to Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead Monday at about 3:15 p.m.

The team was scheduled to play top-seeded Long Beach Poly on Friday night in the first round of the Southern Section Division I playoffs and after an emotional team meeting, players decided to go ahead with the game.

Fountain Valley Principal Greg Ernst said Lang, a 6-foot-6, 250-pounder, had received a thorough physical before he started practicing with the team in July and said he had no clue as to what killed him.

The reason for Lang’s death remained a mystery Tuesday. The Orange County Coroner’s office said the cause of his death may take four to 12 weeks to determine conclusively.

According to his mother, Lang had been suffering from a cold, and he told her Monday morning that he still wasn’t feeling better.