This article was written by BenitoLink investigative reporter Jack Foley.
To this day, his name remains on the team rooster on a national website that tracks high school sports, but 16 year-old Eric Kraul will never again play football for the San Benito High School Haybalers in Hollister—or any other school.
On June 17, a broiling-hot Saturday, Eric’s football dream turned into what doctors now say could be a life-long nightmare.
He suffered a concussion- that much-discussed, serious and complicated brain injury caused typically by a hard blow to the head.
The question nagging Eric and his family since the injury is a simple one: why did it happen at all?
And it begs others, such as:
- Why is contact tolerated in practice scrimmages where it’s prohibited but everyone knows it goes on?
- Why are school districts not liable when broken rules result in serious, life-changing injury?
- Are our child athletes safe under the current rules?
- Why hasn’t Eric’s case prompted change?
No one at San Benito High School interviewed by BenitoLink for this article could remember a case as serious as Eric’s; a concussion so severe that it has changed just about every aspect of his life, according to his family–from eating to emotional health to his school work and his social life. And doctors say it might get even worse.
“They told me that by the time he’s 30 or 35, he might not even recognize me,” said his mother, Karri Brown of Hollister about her son’s head injury.
Ironically, the injury happened during what the rules say was supposed to be an off-season, no-contact, touch-football scrimmage against San Jose High School.
Eric, a tight end, took off across the middle of the field when suddenly, instead of being touched by the San Jose defender to stop play, he was blindsided with a crashing hit as his feet left the ground to catch a pass.
It was the kind of move he’d dreamed of while coming up through the ranks of Hollister football, first on the Pop Warner league Vikings team, then junior high and junior varsity until he made it almost to the top as a second string varsity player in his junior year.
But on the eve of his senior year, still mourning the recent death of his grandfather, former San Benito County Sheriff’s Deputy Dale Brown, and with a real shot at a first-string berth for the 2017-2018 season, Eric’s football career was sidelined forever.
His coach and teammates watched in horror as number 88’s 5-ft. 6-inch, 185-pound frame whiplashed off the ground from the shear power of the defender’s contact, smacking his head with tremendous force against the artificial turf. It left the mop-haired lad dazed, disoriented and unable to see anything but a bright, white light as he was carried off the field.
A worried head coach Bryan Smith stayed at his side and was soon phoning Eric’s mother back home in Hollister.
It was about 90 degrees that day at Westmont High School in San Jose after the bus ride up from Hollister. Several high school teams from the Central Coast Section of the California Interscholastic Federation had gathered for an official but routine, 7 on 7, one-hand-touch passing practice.
Although not a staple in the Haybaler’s tool box, such practices are designed to keep players sharp during the off season while allowing savvy coaches to look for strengths and weaknesses as everyone’s sights focus on the season just two months away.
In the celebration of Hollister’s most popular high school sport, whole families gather for the games, showing their allegiance to the red and white; in some families, sons, fathers and grandfathers have all played for the team.
For Eric’s family, it’s a year-round passion that includes fundraisers such as the annual Forth of July fireworks sales.
The football coach is the highest paid of all the varsity coaches; parents sign waivers to let their kids play and hold the school harmless in the case of injury or even death. Players sidelined with injuries are encouraged to stay involved and help by caring for equipment or supplying water.
On June 17, the players dressed up in their team shorts and shirts, boarded a school bus and drove off to practice under the watchful eyes of their coaches.
No helmets or pads were worn that day; no protective gear is a standing league rule for post-season because no-contact practices minimize over heating and keep play from getting rough.
But things did get rough, and overly so, according to coach Smith, an 11-year veteran with the Haybalers in his second year as head coach.
There is some disagreement about whether Eric was tackled or the defender collided with him; Eric believes he was tackled, his coach says it was not a tackle but a hard collision gone badly.
Either way, contact, while it’s very common, is not supposed to happen at all, according to Smith, who said during such practices “there is contact all over the place.”
So, did the San Jose player violate the rules?
Smith said, “If it’s no-contact, then it’s no-contact (but) I can’t fault the other player for wanting to (make a) play for the ball, I can only fault him for making contact at the moment of him appearing to go and try to get the ball.”
And while Smith said contact is common, Duane Morgan, Commissioner of the Central Coast Section (CCS) of the athletic conference, confirmed that the no-contact rule is hard and fast.
“They are not supposed to have any physical contact during the summertime; it’s very specific and very proscribed,” he told BenitoLink.
However, Morgan said there is no actual protocol for dealing with contact when it happens.
Smith remembers the hit. “I saw the way (Eric) landed, and it didn’t look good,” he said, adding about the other player, “the aggressiveness was a little overboard; it was unnecessary contact.”
He said that as Eric went up for the ball, so did the defender, but that the San Jose player also physically pushed right through Eric, making hard contact, to get to the ball, and that is against league rules.
“I don’t think it was deliberate,” Smith said, adding, “If I thought it was deliberate, intentional, I would have pursued it more.”
As it was, he said he immediately talked to the other coach about the contact and that the San Jose coach then talked directly to the player involved and his other players, all in an effort, Smith said, to make sure everyone went home safe that day.
And all did, except for Eric.
Six months later, a once active, vibrant and outgoing Eric Kraul struggles with memory loss, severe migraine headaches, appetite loss, interpersonal issues, isolation and alternating bouts of depression and crippling, frightening anxiety.
Eric and his mother say his life has been completely upended. Karri Brown rushed that day to San Jose with a friend and drove her semi-coherent son to the emergency room at Hazel Hawkins Hospital. A sports trainer had tended to him initially at Westmont High School.
Once at Hazel Hawkins, ER physician Dr. Jared Gerstein diagnosed a concussion, according to medical records the family shared.
And then he told Eric—who’d been medically cleared to play, as required by law, after two previous concussions over the years—that he could never play contact sports again, Brown said.
“Eric was heartbroken, lying there with tears pouring down his face,” she recalled.
Since the ER visit, there have been routine follow-ups with neurologists at Stanford Hospital.
“I have been told by several doctors that by time he is 30-35 years old, there is a damn good chance it will effect his short term memory permanently, and we (already) see it on a daily basis,” said Brown, who has another son.
Neither Eric nor his mom believes he received the best attention possible at the time of his injury.
Even the training he received in his sports medicine class at San Benito High School taught him that fast action is essential with concussions, Eric said.
“I think I should have been transported, that 911 should have been called,” he said, adding he has watched as teammates have been life-flighted from a game to hospital and that is what should have happened in his case, he believes.
Instead, the trainer on the scene told Brown she could drive Eric to Hollister and take him to his family doctor the next day, she said. Too worried to follow that advice, and aware her son was just not himself, she loaded him in the family’s 2011 Silver Chevrolet Malibu and sped to Hazel Hawkins.
She recalled, “Shortly after talking to parents that attended the scrimmage that day explained that my son’s head whip lashed off the ground, and (they) asked why they didn’t call for an ambulance and life flight him, with tears in my eyes I explain that I ask the same questions all the time…I think immediate medical attention should of been administered, by a proper medical establishment, not a off duty fire medic.”
And to this day, she added, “I have never received any follow up from the school board or any member of the staff.”
Smith and SBHS’s award-winning Athletic Trainer, Danielle Cote, were asked by BenitoLink about Eric’s case. And while only Smith would discuss its details, both suggested that the school follows all proper concussion protocols including baseline testing that’s now required by law.
Cote said, “You don’t want to see anybody go through that, it’s really heart breaking. I hope one day we can find a way to prevent concussions from happening, but there is so much that is unknown.”
As for liability, she said that once physicians have made a decision in an injury matter, there is “no legal requirement for the (school) district to follow up.”
SBHS District Superintendent Shawn Tennenbaum said he was aware of the matter but was not aware of all the details.
“I understand the district did look into the situation,” he said, acknowledging he had not spoken either to Smith or the family about the injury or its aftermath.
Brown, while she continues to be loyal to and supportive of the Haybaler program, has concerns about the way it was handled and the lack of follow up after Eric stopped his association with the team.
“A report should be made no matter what! It was still a school- sanctioned event! They are responsible for my son’s safety when he is with them!” she said.
“After a couple of days of rest, my son went and offered his support to his team at practices, ‘till the coach sent me a text message telling me that it wasn’t necessary for Eric to attend.
“As Eric started feeling pushed away by his coaches and unwanted by his team, he gave up his number 88. He told me he wanted to give another guy a chance to play. He’s so humble, but he’s so heart broken. He deserves to be acknowledged for being a Varsity player and being shunned for being injured,” she said.
Smith said he did all he could to keep Eric involved in some way in the program, but that ultimately the teen decided he wanted to find a job instead.
“I love Eric,” the head coach said. “He played with a lot of heart and gave us everything he had, absolutely, on the field as well as off the field.”
He said he feels badly about Eric’s continued medical issues.
Meanwhile, at both the SBHS and the CCS levels, no one seemed to know what’s supposed to happen, if anything, after a serious injury occurs during a no-contact practice and as a result of illegal contact, whether accidental or intentional.
CSS commissioner Morgan said that unless a complaint is filed, his section does not get involved. And if a coach files one, then the other coach is spoken to.
But that’s about it, according to Morgan.
Asked about sanctions when improper contact happens, Smith said “I don’t have an answer for that.”
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