Spencer Webb, a star football player from Sacramento who played tight end for the University of Oregon, died this week in a cliff-diving accident at a popular swimming hole not far from the university’s Eugene, Oregon, campus.
The Lane County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release that a 22-year-old man died Wednesday afternoon after striking his head while recreating just west of Triangle Lake.
Sheriff’s officials did not identify the victim, but Webb’s family members and high school coaches confirmed the Christian Brothers star’s death to The Sacramento Bee.
The Lane County Sheriff’s Office wrote that deputies responded to the “rock slides” just west of Triangle Lake. Responding paramedics located Webb about 100 yards down a steep trail but were unable to revive him.
The rock slides are an attraction known as Lake Creek Falls, less than a half-mile southwest of Triangle Lake along Highway 36 in Blachly. Triangle Lake and Lake Creek Falls are about an hour’s drive west of the Oregon campus.
Lake Creek Falls is a popular destination for swimming and cliff jumping, according to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which manages the site. Two main jumps at Lake Creek Falls are approximately 25 feet and 35 feet above the water, says a 2011 post to a blog called Eugene Outdoors.
Authorities said the death is believed to be accidental, with no foul play suspected.
In 2017, a 20-year-old Oregon woman suffered serious injuries after falling from the rocks at Lake Creek Falls into the water from a height of about 30 feet, the Associated Press and local news outlets reported at the time. The woman was rock climbing, KVAL 13 reported.
Webb’s death came less than two weeks after another college football player – 20-year-old Brexten Green, a wide receiver for the Emporia State Hornets in Kansas – died in a cliff-diving accident in Oklahoma.
Cliff diving is a subset of cliff jumping. Jumpers can either jump from a high cliff using a parachute, which is known as BASE jumping; or from comparatively lower heights into a body of water, which is cliff diving.
Cliff diving is largely unregulated and prohibited at many cliffs across the U.S. Few reliable statistics are available for the death rate of cliff diving, and the associated danger may vary widely by location, climate and cliff height.
