Girls prep hoops tragedy

I really hope that is the right answer. I would hate to think it is something else (pressure, trainig, drugs, etc...).

 

Well, Hank Gathers was in early 1990, which was almost 20 years ago.

I think we're hearing more about this sort of thing now because of the Internet, but Little League Baseball players have been dying by getting hit in the chest by balls for as long as I can remember ...

 

I may be off on this, but I think not only are more kids playing sports, but more kids with 'conditions' are playing sports. Remember kids who would be too sickly to even dress out for PE? These days those kids are handed an inhaler and told to go play. I've seen more inhalers, insulin pumps, etc. in the last five years than ever before. I saw a prep girl play three days after having her appendix removed.

Can asthmatics and diabetics and such play sports, and play them well? Absolutely, if their condition is managed. But it does add another layer of risk, and "managed" can become "unmanaged" very quickly.

 

What an awful story.

As a writer, I wouldn't know how to deal with it if something like this happened at a game I was covering -- especially if it was a team I'd covered for awhile.

What would you guys do?

 

It was a playoff game with a high-profile local team and player (Veal), so we had a stringer there (a good one) on a busy night. He's married to someone in SID work, and he knows a bit about working a story. He called to let us know what was going on. Our prep coordinator tapped her contacts, and another solid prep person made some calls too. The stringer filled in the details from an eyewitness perspective, and others handled the scene at the hospital and getting quotes from the right people. The LSU women's basketball writer got quotes from the LSU assistant who was there to scout the girl.

We were already working on the Ryan Perrilloux suspension and a whole lot of other stuff. It was a crazy, sad night.

It's good to ask questions about how you'd cover such a story if you've never had to. Usually, good reporter's instincts kick in, and you work it and work it until you get home and all of a sudden the weight of it hits you as a person.

 

Hospital calls are the one that get me. I don't know how to work it.

 

I would let them know that they are on the record, and throw some pretty big softballs their way.

She really enjoyed playing basketball, right?

Tell me some of the things she enjoyed doing.

I would be real careful of the past tense. Anything that breaks them down to tears will probably end the interview.