Oklahoma State University forward dies, collapsed after running stairs in 99 degree heat
Oklahoma State University forward dies, collapsed after running stairs in 99 degree heat
Oklahoma State University forward Tyrek Coger has died after collapsing during a team workout.
Coger, 21, was taken to the Stillwater Medical Center after suffering from heat exhaustion shortly after 5pm on Thursday. He was pronounced dead at 6.23pm.
The workout was a 40-minute session where players were running up and down the stairs of Oklahoma State’s football stadium, Boone Pickens Stadium.
The temperature at OSU’s workout was 99 degrees, with a heat index of 105, the Stillwater News Press reports.
The 6’9″ forward had only been with his Oklahoma State teammates for a few weeks, after transferring from Cape Fear Community College in North Carolina on July 5.
Oklahoma State basketball coach Brad Underwood broke down Friday as he remembered Coger, noting that he was in Las Vegas on a recruiting trip when he learned of Coger’s death and that the past two days have been the most difficult of his coaching career.
‘This is the hardest couple of days I’ve ever experienced in my coaching life. You say goodbye to players when they graduate and that’s one thing,’ Underwood said, pausing to wipe away tears with a towel.
‘Making that phone call to a mother is – there’s no words.
‘Losing a member of the team is like losing a member of the family. But we know our loss pales in comparison to the pain his family is going through.’
The Stillwater News Press also reported Coger had an operation during his senior year of high school at Word of God Christian Academy in Raleigh, North Carolina, to have fluid removed from around his brain.
When he decided to play basketball again, it was in junior college with Eastern Florida State College.
In the opening few weeks of that season he had to travel between Florida and North Carolina to get medical documents that would clear him to take the floor.
Oklahoma State basketball coach Brad Underwood fights back tears at a news conference about the death Tyrek Coger, who died after a 40-minute team workout on the football stadium stairs in hot weather
Oklahoma State’s athletic program has endure a number of deaths in recent years, with women’s basketball coach Kurt Budke and assistant coach Miranda Serna among four who died when their plane crashed during a recruiting trip in Arkansas in 2011.
In 2001, two men’s basketball players – Dan Lawson and Nate Fleming, six staff members – Will Hancock, Pat Noyes, Brian Luinstra, Jared Weiberg, Kendall Durfey, and Bill Teegins, and two pilots died when their plane crashed during a snowstorm in Colorado.
There is a ‘Remember the 10’ memorial outside OSU’s stadium, and each year a race is held to honor those who died.
