The Risk

Wrestler

I wrestled in high school.  I also ran track, and swam, but for three of my high school years, I was a wrestler.  The time I spent on the mats were some of the most physically intense of my life.  In wrestling being part of a team is important.  It helps to share the sacrifices and suffering required to improve.  But in the end, it’s just you and your opponent, on the mat, trying to score and control.  

Injuries are a part of athletics.  It’s “baked in”.  You push yourself beyond the limits your body set.  In wrestling, and in track and swimming, the difference between a great performance and injury is miniscule.  As an athlete I assumed the risk, and later as a coach, I knew injuries would occur.

Knee, lower back, shoulder:  it’s wrestling, of course joints are going to be “torqued”, sometimes beyond their means.  And sometimes injuries occur just because two fifteen year old bodies are trying to react.  My first move was to take Bob Rosenthal down to the mat – he never meant to “counter” my attack by a knee to my face.  I scored the points, but came off the mat and found my nose bent.  I was fifteen – and glad I won.  Mom wasn’t so pleased.

Injury

The worst injury I caused was in a practice session.  I was wrestling the challenger for my varsity position at 126 pounds.  It was a place I suffered for – losing weight the hard and ugly way of 1970’s wrestling.  I started the week a fit and cut 145 pounder, then basically starved myself down to 126 for Friday night’s weigh-in.  Losing the weight was bad, losing my varsity position a fate even worse.  So we were wrestling hard, each trying to score points against the other.

In this match, I got the first takedown, taking Dave down to the mat and controlling him.  I was working to put him on his back, and he was struggling to get back to his feet.  I used a cross face, a simple move of prying the side of his face in the direction I wanted it to go.  But instead of  turning his face away from the arm, Dave turned his face directly into it.  I continued to apply pressure, and there was a yell.

I jumped off.  Dave continued to moan.  As he pressed his face against my arm, somehow, his eye must have moved against a pressed eyelid.  A muscle partially tore off the side of his eye.  There was a lot of pain, some blood, and surprise. None of us, from Coach Miller on down, had seen this kind of injury before.  It was ugly.

My fault – sure it was.  My intention – I didn’t even know that kind of injury existed, so absolutely not.  Dave and I were competitors, we made each other better every time we wrestled.  We went hard, not to hurt each other, but to become better.  He was out for a few weeks.

Coach

I spent forty years as a coach.  I did coach wrestling for more than twenty years, but my “main” sport was track and field.  And while I coached every event in the sport, I earned a reputation as a pole vault coach.  Even today, retired, I am preparing my presentation on how to teach pole vault in a safe way.  I’ll present it to coaches at the state clinic at 8 am on Saturday morning at the end of January.  (You can see it online – Ohio Pole Vault Safety).

Pole vaulting is fun, it’s exciting. It combines speed, strength, agility, daring, equipment, and knowledge.  But there is an inherent danger – the vaulter is flying high in the air.  It is technique that brings them safely into the enormous mats, rather than onto the hard ground.  And the coaches teach that technique. Nationwide, coaches have made tremendous strides to make the event safer, but bad things can still happen.

We can’t avoid every danger.  As athletes, coaches, and humans, we assume a certain level of risk in what we do.  We drive in ice and snow, we climb ladders, we even load lawn tractors onto trailers (Stupid Human Tricks).  Pole vaulters come down the runway with fifteen foot poles that launch them into the air.  Wrestlers go back onto the mat.  Football players, even the superbly fit and prepared players of the National Football League, play football.

Fan

I grew up in Cincinnati, and I’ve been a Bengal fan since the franchise began.  There was a whole lot of bad football in the last fifty-five years, but right now, the team is “hot”.  They’re ranked third in the AFC, battling to be the top team.  To be “Number One”, they have to beat the best team, the Buffalo Bills.  And that was last night’s game, Bengals versus Bills, in Cincinnati.  Two of the top offenses in the NFL,  matched against each other to decide the best in the Conference.

And the Bengals started out great, taking the ball on the opening kickoff and driving down the field for a touchdown.  The Bills responded, making their own drive to score a field goal.  The Bengals were on their second series, again marching down the field.  Tee Higgins, a wide receiver, caught the ball over the middle, made a sidewise move, then ploughed into a defender, Bill’s safety Damar Hamlin.  It was a hard hit, like almost every hit in the NFL.  Hamlin absorbed the blow, taking Higgins to the turf.

Hamlin jumped up, and so did Higgins; both clearly anxious to get ready for the next play in the showdown. Then Hamlin slumped back to the ground.

In the NFL there are always injuries: knees, backs, necks, ankles even heads.  Every player knows the risk.  But sometimes there are injuries so significant and awful that everyone stops, signals for help for the sidelines, and holds their breath.  When quarterback Joe Thiesman broke his leg, everyone knew it. The game stopped.   Hamlin went down, and the entire field seemed to realize that this was something different.  The trainers rushed out, did the basic “ABC’s (airway, breathing, circulation),” and realized that Hamlin’s heart was stopped.  

People

They revived him on the field; CPR, AED and all the rest.  It took almost ten minutes before the medical staff could transfer him to the ambulance to rush to the hospital.  All we know today is he is alive, his heart is beating on its own, and he’s in a “medically induced coma”.  We saw the “humanity” of the NFL last night.  The young heroes of the game, Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow and the Bills quarterback Josh Allen, stood side by side with tears in their eyes.  They looked as young as their twenty-six years.  After the ambulance finally left, the teams went back to the locker rooms, and ultimately the game was postponed.  The game, as important as it was, no longer mattered.  

Today the players will meet in their respective home cities.  Their coaches, I’m sure, will allow the time to speak, share, and process.  I’ve never had an athlete near death on the field.  I have had athletes, and a coach, die in the midst of our season.  Through forty years, the hardest thing I ever did as a coach was to stand, surrounded by young men, and lead them in their grief, even as I grieved myself.  I suspect it’s not much different in the Bills and Bengals meeting rooms today.  

But the Bills and Bengals coaches will do exactly that.  They will try to channel, or partition-off,  their worry and grief.  And then, slowly, maybe over the next couple days; they will return to practice, to their game, and to the life they earned and chose on the field.   The game goes on.

It’s the risk they assumed.

POSTSCRIPT – It’s Friday, January 6th, three and a half days after Damar Hamlin was transported to UC Hospital. The news today: his breathing tube has been removed and he is talking to doctors and family. Damar is on the road to recovery!!!