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| NewsSaturday, October 13, 2007 10:11 PM CDT |
Tri-Point senior, football player passes away
CULLOM — Football practice Thursday at Tri-Point High School was routine — but a few hours later everything changed drastically. Head football coach Will Patterson got a phone call early Friday morning. He heard one of his players, Bradley M. Balazs, an 18-year-old senior from rural Cabery, had died. “A family friend called — he (Balazs) had passed away, apparently of a seizure,” Patterson said. The young man died late Thursday night at an area hospital. “I hung up the phone and wasn’t sure it was real,” Patterson said, adding, “His family wanted me to know before I got to school.” The high school has just 180 students, so Balazs’ death hit the entire community hard. “They (school officials) had a short assembly (Friday morning) and told the kids,” Patterson said. Counseling also was made available. “Bradley is a good kid,” Patterson said. “He and I got along pretty well. “As a football player, Bradley had one gear, and that was full speed,” the coach said of the linebacker/running back. “You give him an assignment, and he goes full speed. That’s the way he did pretty much everything.” The team forfeited its game Friday night at St. Joseph-Ogden. “You just can’t pull it together,” Patterson said. “Thursday at practice everything was fine. There was no indication anything was wrong,” Patterson said. “Obviously, it’d been very hard. There’s a lot of hurt here,” he said. “Nobody thought that was going to happen.” The team met Friday morning to talk and pray. “It was an awfully quiet group,” the coach said. “They’re just in shock.” He suggested his players spend time with family after school Friday. He said he told them: “Go home and give your mom and dad a hug, because you just never know.” |
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