New York High School Football Player Dies from Injury Suffered in Game

by Jeff Fisher
High School Football America

With the national spotlight shining bright on sports concussions and how to make the game of football safer, a New York high school football player died this weekend from an injury sustained during a game Friday night.

According to published reports, Phoenix High School junior Ridge Barden died Friday night after being rushed to the hospital after suffering a head injury in the third quarter of his team's game at Homer High School.

WSYR-TV in Syracuse is reporting that an autopsy shows that the 16-year old Barden died of bleeding in the brain, due to blunt force trauma as the result of a football injury.

Big-Time Cross-Country High School Football Games Nothing New

by Jeff Fisher
The High School Football Huddle

It's become commonplace for high school football teams to pick-up frequent flyer miles these days.

Most of the recent big interstate games are a direct result of the Kirk Herbstreit Varsity Series (with help from ESPN) inviting teams from around the country to descend on cities in Ohio and Texas to settle state high school football bragging rights. It continues this weekend with national powers Don Bosco Prep (Ramsey, NJ) and De La Salle (Concord, CA) squaring-off in New Jersey. It's the second game of a home-and-home series that has sent each team packing and traveling thousands of miles for a football game.

However, today I discovered a story in the New York Times that shows a couple of high school football teams from New York and Chicago were trendsetters back in 1903.

On November 28, 1903 at Brooklyn's Washington Park, Chicago's North Division High School beat Boys' High School of Brooklyn 76-0. According to the report, over 5,000 fans witnessed the game that was called early on account of darkness.

One interesting part of the story...is the Chicago team is described as being from "the west".