UCFAA guilty of negligence

Despite being found guilty of negligence in the Ereck Plancher wrongful death trial, the UCF Athletics Association (UCFAA) currently has no plans to change its policies in the testing of student athletes.

Plancher was a 19-year-old wide receiver on the football team who collapsed during an offseason conditioning drill on March 18, 2008 and died shortly thereafter. The medical examiner in the case determined his cause of death to be dysrhythmia due to acute exertional rhabdomyolysis with sickle cell trait.

UCFAA's team of attorneys claimed that Plancher was notified of his trait and that his death was related to an undiagnosed heart condition.

As a result of the jury's verdict, the Plancher's will be awarded $10 million. UCF plans to appeal the decision.

"We believe Ereck was notified, so I'm not sure if changes are going to be made," said UCF spokesman Grant Heston regarding UCF's testing policies.

Plancher's death is one of about a dozen sickle cell trait-related deaths in athletes that the National Association of Athletic Trainers (NATA) has observed since 2000; most of them were college football players.

Almost a year before Plancher's death, NATA released a "Sickle Cell Trait and the Athlete" consensus statement.

Points made in 

the statement include: 

-Athletes with sickle cell trait can participate in all sports 

-Red blood cells can sickle during intense exertion, blocking blood vessels and posing a grave risk for athletes with sickle cell trait 

-Screening and simple precautions may prevent deaths and help the athlete with sickle cell trait thrive in his or her chosen sport

-Irrespective of screening, institutions should educate staff, coaches and athletes on the potentially lethal nature of this condition."

The consensus also stated that "the case for screening is strong."

The University of Oklahoma makes testing of athletes a regular part of its procedures, and Scott Anderson, the head athletic trainer at Oklahoma, agrees that screening is important.

"If we're going to test and we're going to have that information, we have to have a plan to act upon that, so it becomes more than just testing, more than a piece of information," Anderson said. "There has to be, then, some communication that comes with that."

Anderson said that, as the results become known, the athlete has a meeting with the athletic trainer and then a subsequent meeting with the physician to discuss the facts, risks and complications associated with conditions like sickle cell trait. The decision to tell family members of the results is left to the athlete.

Though Anderson could not comment specifically about the conditions of the drill that took place the day Plancher died, he said he understands how difficult it can be to manage more than 80 athletes.

"I'm only one person out there and I only have one set of eyes, so even under the best of circumstances, it can become a little bit difficult for me to know and recognize immediately what's going on with each individual," Anderson said.

"Coaches are going to see things that I'm not going to see from an athletic trainer's perspective, players are going to see things in their teammates that I'm going to miss that potentially from an athletic training perspective … so the better educated everyone can be relative to [concussion, heat stroke and sickling] the better opportunity I have as an athletic trainer [to identify the problems]."