Friday night, my Western Plains High School Bobcat football team traveled to Otis-Bison High School to take on the Cougars.
The Cougars are a state-ranked team, so we knew it was going to be brutal. However, I had no idea had bad it would be.
By the end of the first quarter, it was 30-0 in their favor. The final score, which of course was registered at the end of the first half due to the 45-point mercy rule, was 53-6.
Again, that wasn’t the worst of it.
The worst came after the game.
All the boys were in the locker room changing and showering when one of them collapsed to the floor, screaming in agony and not knowing who he was talking to or where he was.
Without getting into the details, he was transported by ambulance to Hoisington and then airlifted to Wichita for fear of an aneurysm, which thankfully wasn’t the case in the end.
The trauma doctors in Wichita checked him over, and they determined he had just a mild concussion with heat exhaustion dehydration. The player said he hadn’t eaten hardly anything that day except for lunch, which complicated matters.
Luckily he came out of it all OK and got to come home Saturday morning. Still, though, it was a very scary experience. I pray nothing like that happens again.
Here’s a good opinion piece about how concussions need to be dealt with more pro-actively, especially at the high school level:
Friday Night Blight: Why High School Football Is Ground Zero Of The Concussion Epidemic
