FOOTBALL DEATH REMAINS MYSTERY : FATHER BELIEVES SPORT PLAYED ROLE IN 14-YEAR-OLD SON'S FATALITY.

Byline: Angelo Bruscas Seattle Post-Intelligencer 

Stan Bosse still has the team photo of his son David in football pads displayed in the family dining room.

When he goes snowboarding for the first time this winter, Bosse does it in memory of his son. When he watches sports on television, he thinks of the desire his son displayed at such an early age.

Not a day goes by that Bosse doesn't recall the Oct. 6 football game last year when 14-year-old David collapsed on the field and died from a head injury that still seems unconscionable to his father, his teammates and even his coaches.

The video that Bosse was shooting at the time of the fatal game doesn't show David taking a hit that was any harder than the rest. But there he is, preparing to blitz the quarterback then slumping to the turf, lying motionless while teammates hopelessly try to reach out to him.

In the year since David Bosse died and the King County Medical Examiner in Seattle ruled the death was caused by a blow to the head, Stan Bosse has struggled to understand the nature of the football injury that killed his son.

He wonders if the football helmet was inadequate or fit improperly. He wonders if David was being coached correctly, if he was being asked to play too much too soon.

A year later, those questions still don't have answers and David's death has become one more statistic in an ever-growing list of football players of all levels who have suffered a debilitating head injury. At all levels, but especially with youth, concussions continue to take an alarming toll on the football field.

``Most people don't want to hear and still don't want to admit that it was related to football,'' Bosse said. ``Why do you think that is? Because they fear that it can happen to other kids, maybe even their own. Kids are dying and they will continue to die every year.''

On the day of the fatal injury, Bosse, a nurse anesthetist, led the medical treatment until medics arrived and David was flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where he died. Bosse believes little has been done since then to address the death or examine possible causes.

``I want people to really stop and think about the safety of their kids,'' he said. ``Because that's what it comes down to. It doesn't matter if your kid is eight years old on a Pop Warner football team, or whether he's playing junior college, college or pro. You have one brain and it doesn't repair very well.''

Bosse cringes when he sees pro players suffer concussions and then immediately bounce back to play the following week. The message that leaves with younger players is that they are indispensable, even with a head injury.

He notes that he had some reservations about David's ability to handle playing both ways for Rose Hill Junior High School.

``I had some real concerns about the amount of playing time he was getting,'' Bosse said. ``David played offense and defense, he returned punts, he returned kickoffs. Basically, he only came out when he indicated he need a rest.

``I told him at the beginning of the season that I thought it would be an awful lot of punishment, maybe that's a little too much playing time. And then he died in the second game.''

Bosse now hopes that by talking about David's death, he can convince schools to take the time to regularly inspect their helmets and how they fit the players.