A hot summer day and a full-pad football workout resulted in a fatal accident for one New York City teenager.
Miles Kirkland, a junior at Curtis High School in Staten Island, collapsed during his football practice and later died, according to The Staten Island Advance. The 16-year-old varsity football player was pronounced dead shortly after 11 a.m. on Sept. 1 at Richmond University Medical Center.
The team's staff immediately called 911 after Kirkland collapsed. Firefighters tried to revive the lineman with CPR for 10 minutes and then loaded him onto the ambulance. The city medical examiner's office will conduct an autopsy on Tuesday to determine a cause of death, a spokeswoman told the Advance.
"As you can imagine it was a very emotional scene," Eric Ritzer, the school's athletic director, told the Advance. He met with coaches and players at the hospital after receiving a call about the incident. "Most of the team if not all of the team were there... All of us are trying to fathom what just happened."
Ritzer added that the coaching staff was "distraught beyond imagination."
The offensive and defensive lineman stood at 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighed 295 pounds. He received a good amount of varsity experience during his sophomore season, and was set to start at right guard this upcoming season.
Public high school activities must cease all exercise if the temperature reaches 85 degrees and humidity reaches 80 percent, according to the Public School Athletic League. If the humidity rests between 50 and 80 percent, "extreme caution" should still be exercised when continuing with physical activity.
The temperature at 10 a.m. on Monday stood at 78 degrees with 75 percent humidity. The temperature rose to 80 degrees by 11 a.m., but the humidity dropped to 72 percent.
The team and the school will bring in grief counselors to help students process the tragic event. An investigation into Kirkland's death is underway.
"I am deeply saddened to learn of this tragic loss and my heart goes out to the family," said City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina. "We will be supporting the school community as we investigate this matter."
The Curtis football team is still scheduled to play their first game on Saturday, but "that's the furthest thing from our mind," Ritzer said. He and the staff are most concerned with the students' safety and well-being.
A 2013 study found 38 out of 243 high school and college football player deaths between 1990 and 2010 were from heat-related causes, according to The American Journal of Sports Medicine. Many happened in the South during preseason play, including two-a-day practices.
Parents have sued schools, coaches and other administrators for their childrens' deaths that occurred during these heat-intense workouts. They have cited the pressure to train in extreme conditions and the lack of enforcing "more stringent safeguards against heat exertion" for the cause of the deaths, according to The New York Times.
