Coroner Says Heart Ailment Killed Teen Football Player

A Fountain Valley High athlete who collapsed on the school’s football field last November died of a heart ailment, according to an Orange County coroner’s report released this week.

Steven “Scotty” Lang, 16, died Nov. 15 due to congestive heart failure resulting from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the report states. “In layman’s terms,” said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, “the heart failed because the heart and heart muscle was enlarged.”

Medical investigators could not say why the youth’s heart was enlarged. When he collapsed and died while warming up during football practice three months ago, the 6-foot-6, 250-pound varsity football lineman had no history of medical problems.

Lang had just completed six 20-yard wind sprints--a drill he had performed nearly every day for the previous four months--when he went down on one knee and collapsed as his stunned coaches and teammates looked on.

As the coach, two trainers and finally paramedics tried to revive the young man, his mother, Cindy, raced onto the practice field. “One of the girls from church called me and told me he had fainted on the field,” she said later. “Scotty’s coach called me while I was driving over there and was crying.”

Fountain Valley High Principal Greg Ernst described the young man as having “lots of enthusiasm, lots of energy and lots of friends.” He said the young athlete had received a thorough physical before he started practicing with the team.

“He was the epitome of health,” Ernst said after Lang’s death. “There were no restrictions on his file. . . . I don’t know what else we could have done to help Scotty.”