Kansas high school football player dies after collapsing during game
High school football player Luke Schemm has died, one day after he collapsed during a game in Sharon Springs, Kan.
CBS News reports Schemm, a senior linebacker at Wallace County High School, was pulled off life support Wednesday afternoon, according to Swedish Medical Center in Denver.
Schemm’s father, David Schemm, told CBS affiliate KWCH in Wichita, Kan. that his son suffered brain trauma after the game, which caused it to swell and cut off blood flow. Schemm collapsed on the sidelines after scoring a touchdown. He was taken by ambulance to a local hospital before being flown to Denver, about 220 miles east of Sharon Springs.
A hospital spokesperson told the Associated Press that Schemm had been declared brain dead earlier Wednesday, but was kept on life support for friends and family to “pay their respects.”
Denver NBC affiliate 9News reported Schemm “was hit in the third quarter of hit in the third quarter of Tuesday night's playoff game, and collapsed a short time later.” A representative of the Kansas State High School Activities Association told CBS that officials did not see Schemm sustain any apparent head injuries during the game.
From July through Wednesday, there have been 11 reported deaths in high school football, CBS reports, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research in Chapel Hill, N.C. Per the center, seven of those deaths were directly related to a football trauma.
- Jeremy Woo
