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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Maanvi Singh in Oakland

American football season is getting hotter. Young players are dying

football players playing against pink sunset sky
Players compete in a high school football game in South Dakota. Friday night games have been held this summer later in the evening and teams are practising at dawn. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

At the end of a pre-season football practice in late July, Myzelle Law, a 19-year-old defensive lineman for MidAmerica Nazarene University in Kansas, returned to the locker room, and began showing signs of seizure. It was hot outside, but Law’s internal body temperature had reached 108F (42.2C), his family said. He died about a week later, of heat-related illness.

Last summer, the same thing happened to the 17-year-old lineman Phillip Laster Jr, a rising senior at Brandon high school in Mississippi. In 2021, 16-year-old Drake Geiger, a player for Omaha South high school in Nebraska, died after collapsing on a practice field.

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