Sacramento football player dies after collapsing during game
Joe Davidson
The Kennedy High School student-athlete who collapsed on the sideline in the fourth quarter of Friday night’s spring football game has died, according to the Sacramento City Unified School District.
The senior lineman, identified by school officials as Emmanuel “Manny” Antwi, 18, collapsed as the team played Hiram Johnson High in its season opener on the Greenhaven campus.
“Today, we learned that Emmanuel Antwi, a John F. Kennedy senior athlete, died after a medical emergency during Friday night’s football game,” the district said in a release. “We do not have many details to share beyond this. Our hearts go out to Emmanuel’s family and our school community during this difficult time. We ask all to give them privacy and time for healing and comfort as they grieve.”
He was given medical attention, including CPR for some 10 minutes, before being taken to a hospital and the game was canceled.
“Such a sad night,” SCUSD assistant superintendent Chad Sweitzer, a Kennedy High graduate and the school’s former principal, said of Antwi’s death.
Johnson coach Alex GomesCoelho comforted his stunned team while medics tended Antwi, and he helped console Kennedy coach Brian Lewis.
On Saturday, he was doing much the same with calls and texts among coaches across the California Interscholastic Federation’s Sac-Joaquin Section.
The section tweeted Saturday night: “We’re heartbroken to hear of the passing of Kennedy High School football player Emmanuel Antwi. We are sending thoughts and prayers to his family, friends, teammates, and everybody at @SCUSDKennedy.”
“There is nothing that can prepare you for a moment like that,” Gomes-Coelho said. “The pain is indescribable. When you play or coach team sports you really become a family. My heart hurts for Cougar Nation and Manny’s family at home.”
The news rocked the regional high school football front. Matt Costa was the Kennedy head football coach before taking over at Pleasant Grove in Elk Grove before the 2018 season.
His team is scheduled to play at Kennedy on Friday.
“That whole Kennedy and Johnson coaching staff, they were on my staff at Kennedy,” Costa said “I love those dudes. I’ve been talking to them all day. My heart is broken.” GoFundMe for funeral expenses “’Manny’ was loved by so many and he was a great young man and he definitely was too young to
pass away,” wrote the organizers of a GoFundMe page set to raise money for Antwi’s funeral expenses. “All money raised will be given to his mom to take care of his funeral cost and to help her take care of any bills and her other two children.”
The organizers wrote: “After waiting months due to COVID, the first football game of the season was finally here! He just told his football coach that he finally got his driver’s license. He was so excited.”
As of Sunday morning, the online drive had surpassed its goal of $20,000.
Deaths in youth football are very rare. There were 34 deaths in the last 10 years among middle school and high school athletes that were directly attributable to football, according to an annual study on football injuries prepared in part by the National Federation of State High School Associations. Those are spinal and head injuries that directly caused a death. The study says an additional 70 deaths were indirectly caused by football, including problems like overexertion and medical complications arising.
Youth football is generally much safer than it was 50 years ago, according to the study. There was an average of 2.6 deaths directly caused by football per 100,000 players in 1968; in 2019, that number was 0.36.
In 2020, a year hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic, there were no deaths directly caused by football. Of the six middle school and high school players who died in 2020 indirectly related to football, all of them were offensive or defensive linemen. Half died of heat stroke.