BRANDON, Mississippi (AP) — Soon after Ashanta Laster reached the hospital, she was ushered into the emergency room where she saw doctors performing CPR on her teenage son.
Laster had gotten a call that 17-year-old Phillip Laster Jr., a lineman who played for a top Mississippi high school, had collapsed on the field during an August 2022 practice. At the time, the family says the heat index was 102 degrees (38.9 degrees Celsius) on the football field.
“They kept compressing his chest trying to bring him back. No response, no response. Never a heartbeat,” said Laster, recalling how she dropped her purse, called her husband and started praying.
“I said I was going to call all the prayer warriors and bring my son back. I wanted him to come back,” she continued. “At that point, it was just an unbelievable moment. I can’t believe my son was gone. I could not believe it … I was in a state of shock … that he died … at football practice.”
The death of Laster underscores the dangers facing high school football players, mostly in the Southeast, who are collapsing and dying in late summer at the start of season. Players are most at risk of suffering heat-related illnesses due to searing temperatures and high humidity. Those conditions have worsened in recent decades due to climate change, with extremely hot days becoming more frequent since 1970 in 88% of locations nationwide analyzed by Climate Central, a nonprofit scie