posted on April 11, 2005 10:50:31 AM
LOS ANGELES – Los Angeles Avengers teammates of Al Lucas stood stunned as the 300-pound lineman they called "Big Luke" was carried motionless on a stretcher off the Staples Center floor.
Lucas, a former player with the NFL's Carolina Panthers, died Sunday from a presumed spinal cord injury sustained while trying to make a tackle during an Arena Football League game, the team said.
"There's nothing you can say about what happened," Avengers lineman Sean McNamara said. "It never entered our minds as a possibility."
Players prayed on the sidelines and about 11,000 people watched from the stands as Lucas was carried from the field. He was pronounced dead at California Hospital after attempts to revive him were unsuccessful, team physician Dr. Luga Podesta said in a statement. An autopsy was planned for Monday or Tuesday, the county coroner's office said.
The game continued, and players were told of his fate in the locker room after the game.
"When you've got a player lying on the ground the only thing that goes through your mind is that it could be any of us out there," Avengers fullback Lonnie Ford told the Daily News of Los Angeles. "Al was a great teammate."
"I just wish this was a bad dream," receiver Tony Locke told the Los Angeles Times.
The 26-year-old Lucas was injured during a first-quarter kickoff return against the New York Dragons.
Television replays showed him bending down to make a tackle. As the Dragons' ball carrier and a blocker tumbled over his head and back, the blocker's leg appeared to hit Lucas in the head. Lucas did not move after falling to the ground.
Lucas was married to De'Shonda Lucas and had a daughter, Mariah.
He was well-known in Macon, Ga., where he was born and lived. His father is state Rep. David Lucas, and his mother Elaine is on the Macon City Council. His younger brother Lenny plays for the Macon Knights in Arena Football's minor league.
"He grew up in an athletically and politically-based childhood," Steve Edwards, Lucas's former coach at Macon's Northeast High School, told the Macon Telegraph. "He was a super person and a super athlete."
The Arena Football league's summer season allowed Lucas to return to Northeast as an assistant coach in the fall.
"All his professional experience he freely gave," Northeast defensive coordinator Lance Perlman told the Telegraph. "We're going to have to tell the kids, and they're going to take it hard. He wanted to be a teacher and coach after he was done playing football, and he wanted to do it at Northeast."
Raynette Evans, athletics director of schools in the county where Lucas grew up, remembered him squeezing into a basketball uniform as a child.
"That huge body was extremely intimidating, but he was so gentle," she told the newspaper. "On the field he was aggressive as you want in a player, but off the field he was what you would call a gentle giant."
Lucas went on to college at Troy State University in Alabama, where he played from 1996 to 1999. He was named the top defensive player in NCAA Division I-AA his senior season.
He played two seasons for the Carolina Panthers in 2000 and 2001, recording 49½ tackles in 20 games.
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If it's really "common" sense, why do so few people actually have it?
posted on April 11, 2005 11:43:57 AM
Yes this was a shame. To young to die. But I wonder if it has anything to do with playing inside, probably on a cement floor with artificial turf.
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posted on April 11, 2005 12:07:38 PM
Libra - I don't think so. I don't know if you have seen film from this hit but it was ugly before he hit the ground. Bad timing and awkward positioning.
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If it's really "common" sense, why do so few people actually have it?
posted on April 11, 2005 06:47:52 PM
Sad, but Football is a contact sport, imagine the carnage today if they still played with the equipment of yesteryear.
posted on April 11, 2005 07:30:47 PM
I'm always getting comments about my son..."that boy's gonna play sum football in high school, huh??"
Not if I can help it he's not.
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