Evan Murray, a 17-year-old student at Warren Hills Regional High School in New Jersey and quarterback of their football team, died after suffering an injury during that team's game against Summit High School on Friday night. It has not been made clear what kind of injury, but Murray was described as "woozy" after a hit in the backfield during the second quarter of the game. He left the field under his own power, but apparently collapsed shortly after.
Murray was loaded onto a gurney and taken to a nearby hospital, attempting to give his teammates a thumbs-up to his teammates as he was carted off the field. As this kind of scene has happened many times on high school, college, and professional sidelines across the country, expectations were that Murray would recover. The only part of the story that didn't follow the script was Murray's death.
Murray's death is not as unique as one would hope. On September 6, Tyrell Cameron, a 16-year-old student and football player at Franklin Parrish High School in Winnsboro, Louisiana, died after what appeared to be a freak injury suffered during a punt-return play. Later in September, Ben Hamm, a junior at Wesleyan Christian High School in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, was injured during a game and hospitalized, eventually being placed in a medically-induced coma; he was pronounced dead on September 19. In Indianapolis, a 14-year-old rising sophomore died after a "medical incident" during off-season practice in July.
A little less than a year ago, a 16-year-old student and football player from Long Island, Tom Cutinella, died shortly after an on-field collision. Cutinella was the third high-school player to die in about a week, following the death of a player in Troy, Alabama (in a situation where the cause of his death was disputed) and a 17-year-old in North Carolina, who died after collapsing during warmups (the official cause of death was determined to be "complications of vertebral artery dissection due to blunt force injury of the head and neck," which had occurred two days before in practice). Earlier that month a 16-year-old student and player in Staten Island collapsed and died during practice on a hot and humid day.
During the previous season, a high-school student and football player in Missouri died after being hospitalized for two weeks with a brain injury suffered in a game. Chad Stover was the seventh high-school player fatality of 2013.
There were no reported high-school football-related deaths in 2012.
Many reported causes of death, related in differing ways to playing football.
Sometimes this issue really is life-or-death.
...requiescat in pacem...
Evan Murray
(credit: Vice Sports)
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