High School Football Player Dies After Suffering Injury During Game

A high school football player died Sunday just days after suffering a severe head injury during a game.

Dylan Thomas, who attended Pike County High School in Georgia, was airlifted to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta on Friday after suffering a serious injury playing for the Varsity team against Peach County.

According to FOX 5, the high school junior underwent two surgeries to remove swelling on his brain but was pronounced dead on Sunday.

Nick Burgess, Thomas's uncle, explained that the teenager was hit in the second quarter and then returned onto the field as normal. Later in the game, however, Thomas was sitting on the sideline when he said that his arm and leg had gone numb and then collapsed shortly afterward.

"I heard that he was saying that you know he wasn't really feeling right and that's when his left leg and left arm went numb and he pretty much fell off the bench," he was quoted as saying by Channel 2.

After Thomas was taken to hospital, the family asked the local community to join in prayers. The response extended way beyond that and a Facebook fundraiser launched by Burgess to help Thomas's family pay for hospital bills had raised approximately $25,000 through 587 donations, which included several local businesses, in just over two days at the time of writing

Thomas was not the only player to suffer a serious injury over the weekend, as Tennessee State University middle linebacker Christion Abercrombie was taken to Vanderbilt Medical Center to undergo emergency surgery with a severe head injury.

An Atlanta native, Abercrombie suffered the injury in the second quarter of TSU's game on the road against Vanderbilt and was immediately hospitalized.

"It was just a football play," coach Rod Reed told local radio station WNSR 560 on Sunday. "He was taking on a block and it wasn't anything malicious or dirty or anything like that. Just an unfortunate situation."

In a touching response, both teams met at the halfway line at the end of the game—which Vanderbilt won 31-27—to pray for Abecrombie, who is in his sophomore year at TSU after transferring to Tennessee from Illinois at the beginning of the season.

Concussions and head trauma-related injuries have been a major talking point in football for years and a greater emphasis is now been placed on enhancing the safety of young players. Last year, a report from Boston University's Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center found there was a direct link between participation in youth tackle football before age 12 and impaired mood and behavior later in life.

The study showed that participation in youth football before age 12 increased the risk of problems with behavioral regulation, apathy and executive functioning by twofold and increased the risk of clinically elevated depression scores by three-fold.

Earlier this year, four states—California, Illinois, Maryland, and New York—weighed up legislation that could limit tackling in football for children under 14. However, the bill in Maryland was killed by the state's Ways and Means Committee before it could come to a vote.