Two Tuscarawas County high schools are providing students with mental health counseling after football player Mayson White, 15, suffered a spinal cord injury during a tackle.
White is a student at Tuscarawas Valley Middle-High School. The injury, which left him paralyzed, occurred during a game against Waynedale High School on Aug. 23.
Beyond meeting with counselors, members of the Waynedale football and cheerleading teams reached out to White, said Waynedale High School Principal Rich Roth.
“We did a kind of a therapy where they got to sign a card and get some flowers to his hospital room and that was Monday," Roth said. "It just helps, I think, [to] bring some closure to what they saw and that life moves on.”
Waynedale will also host a fundraiser for White during a game against Fairless High School on Friday, Roth said.
“The main thing that we want to accomplish is to help the family and ease any burdens that might be coming upon them as much as we can," he said. "We all recognize in this business that any of our students are subject to potential harm or injury.”
Meanwhile, White's mother, Amanda Laura Lee White, continues to provide updates on her son's recovery.
Providing immediate support is important to prevent future stress disorders and anxiety due to trauma, said Natalie Bollon, executive director of the Alcohol, Drug Addiction, and Mental Health Services (ADAMHS) Board of Tuscarawas and Carroll Counties.
"If you don't deal with [trauma], your body stores it somehow," she said. "It stores it via anxiety. It stores in your stomach. It stores in its ulcers. It stores as a joint pain. So fundamentally, our bodies keep a toll of these traumas that we don't resolve."
Kids and teens should also resume meaningful activities after they complete therapy, Bollon said.
"If it's music, if it's sports, it's just that that tank is so empty because it's been robbed because the energy has gone toward the trauma," she said.
In 2023, five middle and high school football players across the U.S. suffered spinal cord injuries — a decrease over the past decade, due in part to new tackling techniques that deemphasize head-to-head contact.
