Athlete Deaths Preventable, May Have Genetic Link

Aug. 14, 2011 — -- This month's death of four high school football players in the heat-stricken South is helping to spotlight a current recalibration of how much physical exertion young athletes can endure, one change in what is a broader effort to minimize their risk of injury and illness.

For its part, the Arkansas Activities Association now orders coaches to complete online courses in heat-related illness, which has been cited but not conclusively linked to the Aug. 1 collapse of a 15-year-old Arkansas football player with an underlying heart problem that had gone undiagnosed. He died shortly after collapsing.

Arkansas coaches also must undergo training in methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, MRSA, a type of staph bacteria that does not respond to antibiotics that have been commonly dispatched to treat staph infections. Since at least the early 2000s, schools across the country have reported outbreaks of that potentially deadly infection, spread largely through skin-to-skin contact.

In 2003, a Centers for Disease Control report spotlighted outbreaks of the disease in California, Colorado, Indiana and Pennsylvania.

Last year in Arkansas, one high school athlete died from the infection and another suffered a heart attack.

"He's permanently disabled, in a wheelchair. He has a [tracheotomy tube], and very limited mental capacity," said Dr. Jimmy Tucker, a sports medicine specialist in Little Rock.

More immediately, forecasts that the South's heat wave will extend through September have affirmed the state's recent move to limit two-a-day practices -- especially during extreme heat, when the body requires up to 48 hours to rehydrate -- to every other day and any single practice session to no more than three hours.