As more and more high schools face budgetary constraints, the question of whether it is financially feasible to field a football team is surfacing.
The West Union High School acknowledged that problem recently and turned the program over to a private organization to carry the burden.
Everything was fine until West Union club football player Trent Heater suffered a rib injury when he was struck by an opposing player’s helmet. The injury could have just as easily been a concussion. Laying on the field. Heater had a hard time breathing.
Because the team was being managed by a club, it did not have to staff the game with an athletic trainer, who might have made a more prudent decision.
Instead, an EMT examined Heater. Concluding that he lacked the proper equipment to treat the player at the facility, the EMT had Heater life flighted to a nearby hospital. At the hospital, it was determined that he fractured his ribs.
“That’s a scary feeling,” his father, Brett Heater, told TV Station WKRC. “The upside to that is, you know, the people that pick him up are extremely well trained, know what they’re doing. They can give him the best help that’s available.”
The elder Heater was stuck with a $40,000 star flight bill.
Dr. Carl Maresh, a professor and the director of the exercise science laboratory in the Department of Human Sciences at Ohio State University, suggested to the media that the practice of high school’s divesting football programs poses problems.
“You have the same potential problems and the same potential dangers or risk associated with a club team as you do a sports team associated with a high school,” he said. “If you’re going to make the huge investment of having a football team, for example, then I think that it behooves the administration, or those making the decisions, to decide whether or not they’re going to provide that in the safest way possible.”
