Jasper wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 9:17 pm
Paladin91 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 8:21 pm
Any word on whether this was an official team practice? Wasn’t Spring practice supposed to start yesterday, Feb 8? This occurred on Wednesday morning at the stadium. Someone mentioned to me the possibility of an NCAA violation but I’m unaware of what constitutes an official team practice.
My understanding is that there is a specified number of spring practice sessions dictated by the NCAA. Ours was scheduled to begin on Feb 8th. The unfortunate incident occurred the day before at a team conditioning workout that is allowed for weightlifting, etc. This sort of thing has been going on for years in my understanding and is perfectly legal.
I too don't wish for this kind of stuff to come up now. I saw a national sports reporter asking questions while Bryce was still on life support. I suppose it his job, but I personally thought it was lacking in grace in every way. That said, the questions will be there. For me, I think its important to thing about a few things.
Furman is blessed to have Coach Hendrix, Jason Donnelly, a great staff to lead the team through this. And for President Davis to have orchestrated the awarding of the degree so quickly, with no questions asked, was extraordinarily meaningful and graceful. I'm really proud of how Furman as an institution is handling this. God has placed the right people in the right places to help Furman manage through this.
This is a personal tragedy. A football tragedy. A family tragedy. A campus wide tragedy. This was a great young man who touched the lives of and was touched by the lives of many people in the small, tight knit community that Furman is. Giving people time to grieve before asking questions is what should happen.
Having said that, since the questions are already being asked, a few things are important.
I would expect that Furman is going to look into this to understand what happened with an eye toward protecting our players and making sure we are doing everything we can to try to prevent something like like this happens again.
There will be a proper process for that and we need to give the school time to do it, and I agree with others that is after an appropriate time for people to grieve, begin to heal and for Bryce's contribution to Furman to be properly recognized and remembered.
We may learn somethings and there may be somethings we never know. I have every confidence that from what I understand about the situation, the practice, the things that Bryce was doing that morning, were all beyond reasonable and fully compliant with all NCAA regulations. This was basic conditioning - a "morning run" that virtually every other school in D1 is doing right now. Furman actually posted pictures of the workout (no Bryce is not seen in the pictures) on their social media accounts. No one was hiding anything. Its not a violation, and was not inappropriate.
Trainers/medical personnel were at the workout, responded properly. Based on what I have heard, everything that could have been done was done. It was morning. It was cold. It was not an unreasonably strenuous situation.
It was an unthinkable tragedy.
In that regard, It think for now it is important for us to focus our prayers and energy on the community - family, players, coaches and staff, students, friends - and what we can do as their supporters to love them and help them get through this. And to let the University do what needs to be done and answer the questions - which we can all agree should be asked and answered - in the proper due course, at the right time. Which is not now.
Let's be patent. Furman will do the right thing. I'm confident of that, and confident that our football coaches and support staff did everything they could have done, properly, and this is just an unforeseeable, unthinkable tragedy.
God bless the Stanfields, and the entire Furman community as we get through this.