Four catastrophic health incidents have devastated the New Jersey football community this season, sending ripples through the state and casting a cloud of tragedy over the season.
Linden sophomore Xavier McClain died two weeks after sustaining a hit during a kickoff return. St. John Vianney senior Aaron Van Trease suffered an unspecified spinal injury. Rahway senior Ali Muhammad died in his sleep, though no evidence has linked his death to football.
And on Saturday, Keyport senior Logan Banks “suffered a severe neck and spinal injury” but is “on a path to full recovery,” Keyport’s athletic department tweeted.
The tragedies, the first three of which occurred in a 15-day span in September, have left their respective communities reeling. They’ve also grabbed attention in Westfield.
“To think that it could happen to them,” said Alex Tilyou, a Westfield senior and wide receiver on the football team, “means there’s a small chance that it could even happen to us.”
The proximity of the injuries and deaths to Westfield has intensified that feeling. Linden, Rahway and Westfield are all in Union County. “You’re talking across the highway, across the parkway,” head football coach Jim DeSarno said.
The specter of similar incidents looms, but Westfield has dodged catastrophe, something Westfield players, coaches, trainers and parents attribute to the football program’s diligent application of safety measures.
“The coaches understand their role, and we understand our role,” athletic trainer Steve Barandica said. “We work pretty well together, which I think is one of the reasons why we’re so successful.”
Still, the injuries have sent tremors through those tasked with keeping high school football players safe. “It’s every athletic trainer’s fear,” Barandica said.
The Evolution of Football Safety
Football administrators have in recent years become more attuned to safety concerns. Research on brain injuries and an emphasis on safety have revised the harsh football culture of years past.
“When I played,” said DeSarno, who played offensive line at Montclair State University in the late 1980s, “it was kind of that ‘rub some dirt on it’ kind of mentality. Concussions weren’t really something. They used to give you smelling salts, smelling ammonia packets, to clear your head. [There were] no protocols or things like that.”
One Westfield resident, whose son played football in sixth grade, spoke of doing “nutcrackers” (a drill in which two players sprint at, and collide with, each other) during his time playing high school football in the 1990s. “Nutcracker” and “Oklahoma” drills, which involve players striking each other with full force, are now defunct in New Jersey, a state with some of the strictest contact rules in the country.
In 2019, the NJSIAA limited the amount of time allowed for full-contact drills to 15 minutes a week, a significant drop from the previously allowed 90 minutes. Preseason full-contact drills, once unlimited, also were reduced, shrinking to six hours. When the rules came out, nj.com called them “the most restrictive in the country at any level.”
DeSarno said the rule changes had little impact on his team because Westfield had adopted similar guidelines already. Freshman coach Jay Cook viewed the rule changes as an improvement. “It’s helped the most with load management,” Cook said. “When I played football here, we were doing two-a-days—morning, afternoon, full contact. Now it’s a lot lighter.”
Even as safety grows more prevalent, calamity still strikes. In 2021, the United States experienced four traumatic deaths at the high school level, all stemming from traumatic brain injuries, the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research found in a report. Three took place during games; one occurred during practice.
The four deaths are about average for the 21st century. According to the NCCSIR’s data, since 2000, the United States has averaged about 3.6 fatalities per year “directly due to football” at the middle and high school levels (excluding the COVID-ravaged 2020 season).
That’s a marked improvement from the average of 4.6 deaths per year from 1980 to 1999. Things deteriorate the further back in history one looks: From 1974 to 1976, 35 middle and high school football players died playing football. Twenty-six died in 1968 alone.
The diminishing frequency of catastrophic injuries is due in part to a renewed emphasis on the fundamentals of tackling. “We’re always taught to look at what we hit and keep our head high so we don’t get any concussions or neck injuries,” Tilyou said. In practice, Westfield football players never tackle to the ground.
Westfield does something called “tackling circuit” every Tuesday. The team works through different phases of tackling in the hope of shoring up any fundamental issues in the way it tackles.
“You break things down into their small parts, and you teach it properly,” DeSarno said. “When it’s time to go full speed, you’re able to do it correctly.” The focus on technique begins at the youth level, the better to inculcate proper form. All Westfield PAL tackle football coaches are required to complete the USA Football Heads Up Tackling and the Rutgers S.A.F.E.T.Y. training courses.
“Our community really knows and understands that we do pay attention to these things,” athletic director Sandra Mamary said. “PAL, which runs our youth football program, is also very attuned to the concussions.”
Parents echo Mamary’s and DeSarno’s words. “There was always a focus on proper techniques from their coaches,” said Jennifer O’Connor, whose son, Jack, is a senior co-captain on the football team.
Safety goes beyond tackling. Protective equipment plays an instrumental role in preventing injuries. Westfield’s team of athletic trainers oversees the team’s equipment with a discerning eye, always ready to step in and make adjustments.
The trainers, Barandica and Nicole Castellano, devote time in the summer to fitting every player with protective equipment. The equipment at Westfield’s disposal is, Mamary said, the best available.
‘The Consummate Team Sport’ Is Losing Players
Along with football’s pervasive emphasis on safety, people who have been around football teams insist that players forge a unique connection.
“It’s the consummate team sport,” Jennifer O’Connor said. “It’s really a brotherhood.” Because football players depend on each other to carry out different roles, she said, there must exist a deep trust between the players. Football games are won or lost by the team, not by a single player.
“I have not seen camaraderie like that on any other team,” the aforementioned Westfield resident said of the one year his son played football. Junior Max Romano said he chose football partly for “the camaraderie of the team.”
But football participation is on a downward spiral, the National Federation of High School Associations’ yearly participation surveys show. Between 2013 and 2021, participation in 11-player high school football plummeted in New Jersey from 26,138 to 21,694. Participation nationwide dropped over the same period, from 1,093,234 to 973,792.
During the same span, nationwide participation in soccer, for example, grew by more than 19,000.
“It’s just for safety reasons,” Romano said of the decline. “[Parents] want their kids to mature and grow older.” DeSarno and Mamary maintain that numbers have remained consistent in Westfield, though DeSarno mentioned that some nearby programs struggled to field freshman teams.
“Most of the parents I talk to are like, ‘my kid’s not playing’ and just take a hard line on it,” the Westfield resident said. “There’s a lot more opportunities for kids to play other sports.”
But perceptions vary, even in the same town. One person might think parents are shunning youth football—another might disagree completely. “It’s scary,” O’Connor said, “but I’ve not heard anyone saying, ‘I’m going to pull my son out’ or ‘we shouldn’t play anymore.’”
‘Try and Stay a Step Ahead’
Collisions are embedded in football. To strip away the physicality is to strip away the sport’s identity. But safety measures, equipment improvements and continued education can diminish the risk a football player faces when stepping onto the field.
“You’re always going to try and stay a step ahead,” DeSarno said. Injuries like the recent ones “make you evaluate and make sure you’re doing the things you have to do.”
“Safety always is the highest priority,” Mamary said.
The injuries also have sparked a reckoning among medical professionals. Stephen Kocaj, a doctor who grew up in Westfield, lives in the town now, and practices orthopedics and sports medicine, has had a lot of conversations in the wake of the tragedies.
“Everyone’s talking,” Kocaj said. “Everybody. Even my buddies and colleagues in medicine or out of state.”
The Westfield coaches, confident in their protocols, have not altered the way they run things. “[The coaches] have definitely stressed, just as much as any other year or day, that it’s important to be safe,” Tilyou said.
But as Westfield chugs along with its season, hoping to build on an impressive 5-1 record, it will do so against the backdrop of the nearby tragedies. Westfield, like other programs in the state, will work to shield its players from similar harm.
“The game will ever evolve,” DeSarno said, “and safety will always be part of that evolving journey.”
1 comment
Research is both evident and thorough. Carefully articulated, assertive. Well done.