Importance of emergency plan for stressed at coaches clinic

There was a time when Jason Stinson was able to focus primarily on the X's and O's of high school football.

In 2008, Stinson was coach at Pleasure Ridge Park High School in Louisville, Ky. He looked like the average coach -- a former Division I player, a big man with a voice that carried. By his own admission, his team also was average, a .500 program during his five years at the school.

On Thursday, Stinson stood before a gathering of high school coaches at a clinic at Fitness Plus.

His talk was not on typical football topics. There was no mention of football strategy. It centered on dotting i's and crossing t's.

It covered legal strategy, a warning to coaches about the legal pitfalls of their profession and how best to protect themselves.

Stinson's talk was born from the lessons, trials and tribulations incurred after the death of one of his players, 15-year-old Max Gilpin.

Gilpin collapsed of heatstroke after running gassers at the end of practice Aug. 20, 2008. He died three days later.

Stinson stressed to his audience that Gilpin's death was a tragedy.

"Don't lose that," Stinson said. "I would not deny that."

But what followed was enough to inspire Rodney Daugherty, a high school classmate of Stinson's at Fairdale High School, to write the book, "Factors Unknown: The Tragedy that Put A Coach and Football on Trial."

Stinson was charged with reckless homicide.

"I'm the first football coach that has been investigated, indicted and charged and taken to trial for the death of a football player," Stinson said.

The case drew national media attention, including a large spread in the Dec. 6, 2010 issue of Sports Illustrated.

The former Division I player said he has had two speeding tickets in his life but no other encounters with the law.

"Here I am on trial for reckless homicide," Stinson said. "They wanted to put me in prison with murderers, rapists, thieves and other people. That could be you."

Stinson was acquitted of reckless homicide and wanton endangerment in the first degree after a 13-day trial in 2009. It took the jury less than 90 minutes to find him not guilty.

"Football was on trial," Stinson said. "The way we did business was on trial."

Stinson still coaches football. He now is an assistant at Iroquois High School in Louisville, hoping to work his way back to a head coaching job.

But he has made it a priority to preach to his coaching brethren about the legal perils that loom when an ordinary day turns tragic.

"There were a lot of things I learned, and I was a pretty astute student of the game," Stinson said. "There were things I learned where now we can tell these coaches and make sure it doesn't happen to other kids."

Stinson detailed procedures every program should follow, from updated medical forms to following state and local association guidelines, with an emphasis on documentation at all stages.

He also outlined an emergency plan, which included immediately hiring an attorney to serve as the coach's spokesperson, as well as documenting all conversations with supervisors, parents, players and law enforcement. He recommended a communication plan for the school district to designate spokespersons, and to speak concisely.

He informed coaches to never give a "no comment" to the media, but rather refer them to an attorney or superintendent.

He said he saw the media run with his own "no comment" on a question about whether he denied water to his players the day of the incident with Gilpin.

"Coaches have been sued for years," Stinson said. "But the criminal case was an absolute mess. It was brought on by irresponsible reporting, irresponsible prosecuting -- Dave Stengel's office -- and it was brought on by irresponsible law enforcement. It was just a lot of different things."

It was not what Stinson was looking for when he said he quit his job as a system analyst with Xerox to follow a calling into teaching and coaching. He said he was paid three times more and worked fewer hours at Xerox.

Instead, he found himself facing $120,000 in defense legal fees, of which $97,000 were paid for in fundraising by a largely supportive community.

There was no video footage of Gilpin's collapse, which occurred with parents watching and the school's athletic director and a soccer game in the vicinity. There was only a wild array of eyewitness accounts of the practice, which lasted about two hours on a day when the temperature reached 94 degrees.

In the end, a number of other factors were cited at the trial that could have contributed to the death of Gilpin.

According to Daugherty's book, medical records of tests during Gilpin's hospitalization were not consistent with dehydration, and there was evidence Gilpin was ill the day of the incident.

Dr. George Nichols, the former chief medical examiner for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, concluded that the prescription drug Adderall that Gilpin took for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) likely triggered the fatal heatstroke. Testimony also said Gilpin had been known to take Creatine, which has been associated with heat-intolerance.

Stinson said he has no guilt about the tragedy, and his presentations are not guilt-driven or an attempt to vindicate himself.

"Guilt assumes you did something wrong," Stinson said after his presentation. "We didn't do anything wrong that day. We had a normal football practice and we followed all the rules and regulations. When the young man went down, he was treated like he would be treated as your son.

"I'll take responsibility for everything I need to take responsibility for, but I'm not going to take responsibility for something we didn't have a hand in. We had a normal football practice."

Stinson's ordeal hit home with local coaches.

"Just to listen to him talk, you can tell he takes care of business and does things the right way, just like we all do," Perryville football coach Mike Wojtczuk said. "The bottom line is, one little slip up or one thing you may have forgotten could be the difference in the whole thing."

Central football coach Nathan Norman said he's fortunate to have a trainer available at all of Central's practices, but he saw the need for better organization.

"It really opens your eyes up to what can happen in the real world," Norman said. "It makes you feel like, 'Hey, you better get your ducks in order and be prepared and have a plan.' Like the man said, everybody is in this business to help kids and improve their lives. You can do everything right, and boy the tables can turn on you so quickly."

Jackson football coach Van Hitt said the Indians do not hold practices with heat indexes of 105 or above, and extreme caution is taken with temperatures at 95 or above.

"It could happen to any one of us," Hitt said about Stinson's situation. "It gets hard to judge a young man. Is he actually loafing, trying to get out of work, or is he in distress? It's hard.

"Every practice we have, we have a certified trainer at all times. And they are constantly monitoring kids. And if there is any question ... if a kid comes up to any coach, that kid goes over to see the trainer, and he evaluates him. He takes their blood pressure. He takes their temperature. He checks their vital signs. He can tell. He's trained in those areas. That's a big plus for us as coaches."