Editorial

More than a game

Posted 1/13/23

America held its collective breath last week during 30 tense minutes at a Monday night football game.

Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills lay on the field while trainers and emergency personnel …

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Editorial

More than a game

Posted

America held its collective breath last week during 30 tense minutes at a Monday night football game.

Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills lay on the field while trainers and emergency personnel tended to him. Hamlin, we would learn, had suffered cardiac arrest and was revived on the field before being placed in an ambulance and taken to a nearby hospital. The game was halted.

The story is apparently well on its way to a happy ending. On Monday he was transferred to a Buffalo hospital and has made significant progress. Donations, meanwhile, have poured in to a charity associated with the NFL star.

Monday’s game was canceled, but the Bills played at home Sunday, and took the time to honor their training staff before the game.

There was another happy ending to a similar story later in the week. Eric Huss, a member of the Army Hockey team, suffered a serious injury on the ice in a game against Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT. Huss suffered an injury from an inadvertent skate to his neck. Quick action from trainer Rachel Leahy of Newburgh was credited with saving his life. Huss, too, is on the way to recovery,

Not every story has a happy ending. Nearly a century ago, Richard Sheridan, a member of the Army football team, lost his life after being seriously injured in a game against Yale in New Haven, CT. According to the New York Times, Sheridan died on October 26, 1931, two days after sustaining a broken neck in a game at the Yale Bowl.

One old-timer recalled a train carrying the team through the Maybrook Terminal on the New York, New Haven and Hartford Rail Line. The cadets were loud and boisterous on the train into New Haven. The return trip that evening was marked by stunned silence.

Sheridan is remembered with a memorial bench at West Point.

These moments are reminders that athletes of all sizes and ages face risk any time they enter the field of play. And while we should enjoy the games we play, we are reminded that life can be fragile, even for the greatest of athletes.