‘Freak accident’ claims high school rugby player

A high school has withdrawn from P.E.I. schools’ rugby league for the season following the death of a student athlete who sustained brain injuries on the field.

Montague Regional High School has confirmed the death of Brodie McCarthy, 18, from a brain injury sustained during a rugby tournament in Summerside.

“Brodie was one of the nicest kids you could ever meet,” Seana EvansRenaud, the school’s principal, said in a phone interview Monday.

She said McCarthy was injured during a routine play at the David Voye Memorial Rugby Tournament which resulted in bleeding from two different parts of his brain.

He was taken to a Summerside hospital and then transported to Moncton, where doctors conducted surgery on his brain Friday night.

On Saturday, doctors conducted a CAT scan which revealed no brain activity, Evans-Renaud said.

Phil Bridges, school sport coordinator for the P.E.I. School Athletic Association, confirmed Monday that the Montague school’s boys and girls’ teams have withdrawn from their leagues for the season.

He said that the association has cancelled or postponed rugby games that were scheduled for this week.

Evans-Renaud said McCarthy’s parents donated his organs because, a month earlier, he expressed to them if anything were to happen to him, that’s what he would have wanted.

“One of the teachers said, ‘You could never get mad at him.’ He was just always smiling, always being an all-around good guy, good friend and a good brother.”

The teenager would have graduated in June.

McCarthy was an avid athlete, Evans-Renaud said, and excelled in multiple sports.