Kentucky is still losing high school athletes to preventable deaths

Three years after The Courier Journal published "Safer Sidelines," an investigation that shined a light on often-preventable athlete deaths, Kentucky has made incremental changes. Meanwhile, three more high school athletes died and another suffered potentially irreparable harm. Not only are athletes still collapsing and dying across the commonwealth, it's happening at a similar rate dating back to the 1970s, with one-fifth of all known high school athlete deaths in Kentucky occurring in just the last six years.

Deaths never investigated Safer Sidelines highlighted a concept in sports medicine know as the 4Hs. That refers to the four leading causes of death in athletes: head (trauma), heart (sudden cardiac arrest), hemoglobin (blood) or heat. Nobody knows for sure how many athletes have died in the state of Kentucky, or nationally, or who they all were.

There is no national public database that includes their names and the circumstances of their deaths. The Courier Journal has been compiling one, based on news reports that date back to 1909, the earliest published report the paper could find. That data and the paper's own reporting shows in the last 10 years: Heart in 2017: Paul Laurence Dunbar High basketball player Star Ifeacho died from sudden cardiac arrest during an off-season practice; Heart in 2020: St.

Henry soccer player Matthew Mangine Jr. died from sudden cardiac arrest during the first day of practice; Heart in 2022: Knott County Central football player Aaron "Mick" Crawford died from sudden cardiac arrest while helping a neighbor during the historic Eastern Kentucky flooding. (While his death is classified by the state as a "flood victim," because he was an athlete that suffered a cardiac-related event that could have been detected if schools required prevention measures like heart screenings, such as an EKG or echo, he is included in the Deadly Games database .