Nearly 25 years after Korey Stringer's heat exhaustion death, how is Minnesota protecting high school athletes?
The family of a Minnesota Vikings player who died at training camp from heat exhaustion in 2001 is still fighting to protect others.
Much of the work at the Korey Stringer Institute is focused on helping high school athletes, but Minnesota falls short of those protections they'd like to see.
Since Kelci Stringer lost her husband Korey Stringer to heat stroke in 2001 at Vikings Training Camp, she's been going to bat for young athletes.
"What we do is to advocate to get policies changed in each state for high school athletes," said Kelci Stringer. "They're often the ones forgotten when it comes to trainers and their health criteria," said Stringer.
"We've changed 476 policies nationwide," said Doug Casa, CEO of the Korey Stringer Institute
In their quest to make high school athletics safer, the Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut has developed a rubric to score each state on their safety policies for everything from heat stroke to traumatic head injuries and cardiac arrest.
"Minnesota is literally one of our two worst states in the country for policy," said Casa. "When you look at your state — which is sad for me because obviously this is where Korey Stringer played pro football — you ranked 49th of 51."
Minnesota scores 33.75 out of 100, scoring 3.75 out of 20 for heat stroke policies like allowing two-a-day practices at the beginning of the season in the heat of the summer.
"You have most stuff for the head injuries, you have some stuff related to athletic training services, you lack a lot in heat stroke stuff," said Casa
Doug Kasa says following KSI protocols and remaining competitive is possible. States like Georgia and Florida score 93 and higher.
"It shows it can be done," said Casa.
So what would it take to change those policies? Who makes the call?
"Each state then has a sports med advisory committee and they advise to the state high school athletic association on policies that should be in place," said Casa.
"Our job is to take data and then review our safety policies to make sure we're up to date with that," said Dr. Maria Ryan, co-chair of the sports medicine advisory committee for the Minnesota State High School League. "In the state of Minnesota we do have a heat acclimatization protocol."
Ryan says that the league on hot days will "send out emails to the schools saying hey make sure you're checking the temps make sure you're aware of the heat policy."
But in many cases protocols are strongly encouraged, not required, leaving the ultimate decision up to schools and districts.
"Just because that standard is set for the nation doesn't necessarily mean it's the right thing for Minnesota," said Ryan. "It's not that we can't require it. We could easily require it. Who is going to police that? Who is going to follow up to make sure schools are bringing out those water tubs? Who is going to be the one checking that? You think of all greater Minnesota and the state high school league frankly can't do all of that."
WCCO asked her about the low score on the KSI criteria and if they've considered changing their policies and requiring stricter safety standards.
"To make a rule stricter you really have to have data that says there's actual risk for this to happen and we don't have that," said Ryan. "The data inputted by athletic trainers is not showing increased heat injury."
"They've more taken the philosophy of we want each high school to decide for themselves what their policies should be," said Casa. "The problem with that is not each high school is going to have a heat expert or a head expert or a cardiac expert."
"Right now we're sort of saying we're okay," said Ryan "We're constantly reviewing that."
"It's not about our opinion it's the research," said Kelci Stringer. "The more educated we are the better the athletes can be."
Ryan says they're suggesting further changes to the heat policies to the board for consideration.