High School Football Can Paralyze Futures

By Sara Romaine, Staff Writer

The smell of the crisp fall air mixes with freshly cut grass and fills my nostrils, awakening my lungs. People mill about the track that traces the edge of the field. Excitement and pride fill the air as the sun shines brightly upon the lines of boys stretching across the field. 

It is Saturday, and just as every Saturday for the past four years, I watch my brother stretching with his team. The energy explodes out of these young men and across the field, they line up upon the field, feeling like they have everything to prove.

An American past time

For my brother, it’s senior year. For him, game time is really game time. Recruiters watching, scholarships, college, awards, rivalries… For him, and I am sure for many more of those boys, the game has become much more than a game.


My consideration is curbed by the snap of the ball. The curves of their calf muscles contract as their cleats push off the grass. Bodies collide, and the noise of plastic sounds. Crunch. Someone is down, already. The field takes a knee. The trainers hurry out on to the field to see how bad it is this time. The mother nearby leaps out of her seat and rushes to the fence. 


20,000


In high school football there are 20,000 injuries a year.  Approximately 35 percent of these injuries are to the head or the neck. Most blame poor helmet gear. Regardless, 13 young men died playing high school football last year.

High School Junior Pete Stenhoff 
is down on the field after a play.

No scholarships, college, awards, or rivalries for them or for the 12% that survive, yet remain permanently disabled.

One of the 20,000 is Pete Stenhoff, a 16-year-old junior who played football for Chila Vista High School, CA. As the ball was snapped one fateful day, Pete pushed dug his cleats into the earth below him. Catapulting himself forward, he bent, shoulders down, ramming his head into a ball carrier’s chest, cracking his vertebrae— paralyzing both his body and his future.

Pete comments, “I knew the risks when I decided to play football.”

Watching my brother play football, though, every Saturday morning, I tend to wonder, as I linger on Pete’s closing words…

                                            “…but I wish I could have known just how bad it could be.”