Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Another High School Football Player Charged With Murder

What is going on!! Yes, The High School Football Huddle is all about what is positive in this great sport, but I cannot ignore the growing number of young men who are being charged with violent crimes since the start of the new year.

The latest is 18-year old Jarray Casey of Long Beach Poly High School, who has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge in connection with the January 8th slaying of Rashad Ali. Casey reportedly has verbally committed to playing his college ball at Oregon.

This news comes on the heels of last Friday's murder of Courtland High School's Baron Braswell II in Spotslyvania, Virginia by five students. All in all there have been a half dozen incidents involving high school players.

In 2004 Ohio's Mr. Football Raymond Williams of Benedictine High saw his scholarship and life go up-in-smoke after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter along with two of his teammates.

Of course high school football isn't immunded to the ills of society, but someone's got to at least talk about it!

I recently read a report that found that most high school students say it's easy to purchase a gun, and a lot of inner city kids say that they've either witnessed a shooting, know of someone involved in a shooting or know of a student with a gun. This is frightening!

I'm not going to go off on gun control issues or anything like that. But what I am going to suggest is some way, some how coaches should start counseling players on the do's and don'ts of guns. It's just as important as X's and O's!!

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