Congressman considers expanding federal legislation for student athletes after death of Franklin student

Congressman Kweisi Mfume is considering expanding legislation protecting college athletes to high school players following the death of a Franklin High School football player earlier this month.

Leslie Noble, a 16-year-old junior guard on Franklin's varsity football team, died on August 14 after collapsing during a practice. Emergency crews were called to the high school football field in Reisterstown for suspected heat stroke.

Mfume, a Democrat who represents the greater Baltimore area, said this week he is considering expanding the Jordan McNair Student-Athlete Heat Fatality Prevention Act in light of Noble's death. The bill, introduced in Congress in June 2023 but not yet passed, is named in honor of McNair, a University of Maryland football player who died of heat stroke after a practice in 2018.

As introduced by Mfume and fellow Democratic U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, the bill would require colleges and universities across the country to create heat emergency plans detailing their planned use of automated external defibrillators and cold water immersion devices. A spokesperson for Mfume said the congressman is currently reviewing the possibility of implementing high school programs.

Mfume told The Sun that he played Little League baseball as a child and that his experience was ideally based on respect, trust and sportsmanship.

“Those early childhood memories of sports should be some of our young people's most cherished moments, and yet student-athletes in tragic situations like these experience nothing but trauma as they mourn the loss of their teammate simply because he was on the field practicing that day,” Mfume said through a spokesperson. “My heart aches for Leslie Noble, his family, his friends and his peers at schools across Maryland.”

Maryland passed a separate college sports safety law in 2021, the Jordan McNair Safe and Fair Play Act, which went into effect in July. The law requires athletic departments to create policies to prevent and treat brain injuries, heat-related illnesses and other conditions. More than an hour passed between the time McNair first showed signs of heat stroke and the time university administrators called 911.

Further deaths of prominent figures in Maryland led to reforms in middle and high schools.

Baltimore City Public Schools agreed to hire a full-time athletic trainer at each of its high schools after the family of a 17-year-old football player sued the district. Elijah Gorham, a wide receiver at Mergenthaler Vocational Technical High School, was tackled and injured in an end zone during a fall 2021 football game against Paul Laurence Dunbar High School.

No athletic trainer was present the day Gorham was injured. An on-site paramedic and city school staff treated Gorham for nearly 45 minutes before he was taken by ambulance to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center for surgery. He died in the hospital nearly a month later from complications of traumatic brain injury.

As part of a settlement in the family's lawsuit, the city of Baltimore must work with the fire department to ensure rapid response times at sporting events and increase emergency training for coaches and student-athletes.

A law passed in 2022, the Elijah Gorham Act, requires all middle and high schools in Maryland to develop emergency plans for their athletic facilities, including the use of defibrillators and cooling devices in the event of heat stroke.

A Baltimore County Public Schools spokesman said an athletic trainer was at Franklin High School football practice when Noble collapsed.

Martin McNair, Jordan McNair's father and founder of the Jordan McNair Foundation, said he believes the federal bill introduced by Mfume and Cardin could have a far greater impact if it were expanded to include high schools. Colleges have many more resources to implement safety measures than high schools, he said, and the number of deaths among college athletes has declined as a result.

“These types of bills, like the Athlete Fatality Act, would be much more impactful if we extended it to the high school level,” he said. “Something like that always ensures a certain level of accountability and safety.”

McNair said he has not yet spoken to Mfume about the potential expansion, but he expects some details regarding penalties in the proposed law will need to be worked out. As proposed, colleges and universities could lose funding if they do not comply, he said. But McNair said he supports creating greater accountability at all levels of student sports.

“We would really like to create this basic standard across the country,” he said.

Originally published: August 24, 2024 at 18:23