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Copyright 2003 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
September 7, 2003 Sunday Home Edition
SECTION: Sports; Pg. 1D
LENGTH: 3462 words
SERIES: PLAYING WITH DANGER
HEADLINE: PLAYING WITH DANGER: Policies, finances put high school athletes at
risk: Suddenly lost;
Two very different Georgia athletes and their families became linked when a
similar fate struck both nearly simultaneously
BYLINE: MICHELLE HISKEY
SOURCE: AJC
BODY:
Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2003
Billie Jean Plankenhorn had just put a dish of pork roast and potatoes in the
oven around 5 p.m. when the phone rang. Son Derrick had fallen during track
practice at Southeast Bulloch High School, his brother said.
With three boys in sports, she wasn't overly worried. She'd been to the
emergency room many times, and she knew how Derrick tended to milk his injuries
for attention. She got in her 1996 Olds Ciera and pulled out onto the dirt road
in Stilson, a South Georgia community between Statesboro and Savannah that is so
small it has no post office.
At 7 the next morning, a phone rang in another kitchen 190 miles north.
Sandy Boslet had just fed her three younger children breakfast. At first she
thought the caller was joking about her oldest son, a football star at
Chattahoochee High School in north Fulton County.
"Ryan is down. He's unconscious. You've got to come to school," his best
friend told her.
In a minute she changed out of her pajamas and with husband Chris dashed off
in his company car out of the cul-de-sac of $300,000-plus homes into rush hour
traffic.
Fourteen hours separated the calls that first warned these families that
their seemingly healthy sons were in trouble.
Derrick Plankenhorn, a scrappy overachiever, never met Ryan Boslet, a gifted,
huggable giant. They came from very different worlds: Derrick, 18, lived in
rural peanut and cotton country, and Ryan, 17, in a well-to-do, congested
Atlanta suburb.
Their lives converged through death, when they collapsed while running at
routine practices. Both their hearts stopped so completely and suddenly that
neither put his hands out to break the fall.
Almost six months later, the sudden loss of these athletes from undetected
heart ailments continues to reverberate through two communities, and the state.
Both campuses were devastated by deaths witnessed by dozens of students, and
responded by creating memorials and rituals to celebrate Derrick's and Ryan's
lives.
And the families have reached out to one another, believing and hoping that
their boys were taken as a way of saving others.
Nov. 7, 1984
Savannah
Nine weeks premature, Derrick Plankenhorn was so sickly that on the 1-to-10
Apgar measurement of newborns, the doctor rated him a 2. He spent a week on
oxygen and a respirator, and his parents feared he wouldn't make it.
He left the hospital with a permanent dent in his chest, a condition known as
pectus excavatum. A congenital deformity found in one of every 400 births, it
typically causes no heart or lung problems but becomes more noticeable with age.
Derrick grew to deflect his physical flaws with humor. He joked that the
cavity would make a convenient cereal bowl for eating breakfast in bed.
He would always occupy the smallest percentile on the doctor's height-weight
chart. At home he always came up short against his brother Brian, two years
older, a star quarterback who needled him without mercy.
The two grew to the same height --- 6 feet 2 --- but at 160 pounds, Derrick
was 50 pounds lighter. Rawboned is the word some use in South Georgia. His red
hair reflected his feisty spirit, said his mom, Billie Jean, a kindergarten
paraprofessional.
"Derrick always had to work harder," his dad, Donald, a welder and fitter,
recalled. "He would not quit."
Derrick tried out for teams Brian starred on, and doggedly played defensive
end and long snapper for the Region 3-AA Southeast Bulloch Yellow Jackets.
Coaches tagged Derrick as the quintessential overachiever, who motivated lazy
players with twice his talent.
Chad Nighbert remembers his first day as the team's defensive coordinator.
"When he told me he was the starting defensive end, I was shocked. No way,"
Nighbert said. "His size didn't tell the whole story."
Part of Derrick's drive came from his Baptist faith. Even when the family
slept in, Derrick drove himself to church.
"I want to be known for all the things I help do on earth and the people I
help save," he wrote in a school autobiography project in elementary school. His
interim plans were less certain: "Ten years from now I hope to be still alive."
He believed that he was called by God to make the most of his modest athletic
gifts. His favorite verse was I Corinthians 9:24: "Run that you may obtain the
prize."
Some prize: While Brian got the nickname "Big Plank", Derrick was "Baby
Plank." As a way to break free of his brother, Derrick went out for track in
early 2002. His dad told him bluntly what almost everyone thought: "You are
wasting your time. You can't run with those black boys."
The team had room for someone at 400 meters. Derrick stepped up.
He won his first race, anchored the relays and ended the season fourth at the
state meet. His coach wasn't sure how to honor such an anomaly. So Derrick got a
new award: "Surprise of the Year."
"Track gave him the confidence," his dad said. "I could see a difference in
him. He wasn't in his brother's shadow. He was his own person."
Derrick had a new nickname: "White Lightning," inspiring a fellow student to
later pen these lines:
"At the end of the race, when it's all over and done, people would sit back
in awe and say, 'That white boy sure can run!' "
Oct. 23, 1985
Atlanta
Christopher Ryan Boslet was born in perfect health at Northside Hospital, the
nation's busiest maternity ward, weighing 8 pounds, 10 ounces. He never stayed
on the doctor's size charts. In his Little League team photos, he stands a head
taller than his teammates.
His feet would grow to size 15. "I couldn't find shoes that big. That was the
hardest thing," said his mom, Sandy, an interior designer and decorator.
The oldest of four children, Ryan possessed a firstborn's self-confidence and
the physique, talent and will to dominate whatever athletic pursuit he tried.
Besides the typical team sports, he completed the first of four week-long,
marathon Bicycle Rides Across Georgia when he was 11.
By seventh grade, he stood 6 feet and topped 200 pounds. "He was already as
big as some of the kids on the [Chattahoochee High School] varsity," said George
Moser, who coached Ryan's North Fulton Cougars to a 22-0 record. Ryan's size and
speed as a defensive tackle made him co-MVP.
Ryan enjoyed the obscurity of that position. His easygoing personality, his
niceness to school geeks and the birthday roses he brought to his girl pals ---
his behavior didn't match the hard charger others saw on the field. One teacher
wrote an apologetic note to Ryan's parents after she assumed his girth made him
a troublemaker. "He's the sweetest child," she said.
By age 17, he was 6-4 and 270 pounds, with a mop of brown curly hair. When he
wore a bright green shirt, his best friend John Hafferty dubbed him "Shrek."
Ryan loved to eat anything from sushi to burned french fries.
The fall of 2002, he started as a junior for Chattahoochee, a perennial
Region 6-AAAAA contender. Despite a foot injury, Ryan had 45 tackles and three
sacks, forced a fumble and recovered another.
After the playoffs, he geared up to get in tiptop shape. He signed up with
trainer Brad Pope, who works with Atlanta Braves catcher Javy Lopez. The fall of
2003, Ryan told his family, "is going to be my breakout season."
Feb. 19, 2003
Brooklet
Derrick Plankenhorn practically pawed at the Southeast Bulloch track, eager
to get going on his last track season. The school was replacing its old concrete
oval with a soft rubber surface, so shin splints no longer would be a problem.
Shaving a few seconds off his 400-meter time could well earn him a state title.
If that happened, he might even take off his shirt. Two months before, he had
undergone surgery to put two metal rods in his chest, pushing out the prominent
indentation. Although doctors and his parents considered the improvement mostly
cosmetic, it gave Derrick a psychological boost. What sprinter wouldn't want the
thought of more lung capacity, even if it wasn't so?
His surgeon, a specialist in pediatric thoracic surgery, cleared him to
compete and scheduled a follow-up appointment for August.
"We had every reason to believe he would be fine," said Southeast Bulloch
principal John A. Frazier. "We had no reason to believe he wasn't in good shape
to be doing what he was doing."
Fueled by peanut butter sandwiches his mom fixed to give him energy, Derrick
launched into what was a light workout and, as usual, finished before anyone
else. There was one cool-down lap left, and he hooked up with his friend Ricky
Williams and they rounded the track's second curve.
Sprint coach Mike Sparks first thought Derrick had stepped off the inside of
the track and sprained his ankle. When he didn't get up, Sparks thought maybe an
errant shotput had smacked him. When Ricky started screaming, Sparks dashed
over.
Derrick was trying to catch his breath. Sparks called his name and Derrick
didn't respond.
Sparks started CPR. Distance coach Jim Higgins assisted, and at 5:03 p.m. a
manager called 911.
A volunteer fireman heard the call on his scanner and arrived with a
breathing bag. In eight minutes, an ambulance arrived and paramedics shocked
Derrick's heart with defibrillator paddles.
No response.
Derrick's little brother Dustin, an eighth-grader who ran the 400 for the
adjacent middle school, watched the scene unfold. "In minutes he was purple,"
Dustin recalled. "It was bad."
On her way over, Billie Jean Plankenhorn heard that Derrick's condition was
worse than she first thought, and she sped to East Georgia Regional Medical
Center, eight miles past the school. About 150 other kids practicing sports at
the school saw Derrick's collapse, and now dozens filled the emergency room.
His mom peppered the coaches: "How bad is it?" None would look her in the
eye, and some were crying.
The only response: "They're working on him."
When hospital staff learned she was Derrick's mother, they ushered her into a
private room, tipping her off that something was very wrong. "I'd been in the ER
for broken bones and stitches, and they don't do you like that," she recalled.
An anguished Don Plankenhorn watched the staff treat his son. "Get up!" he
told Derrick. "Get up!" And to the doctors: "Don't quit working on him!"
At 6:27 p.m., they stopped. Derrick was gone.
Feb. 20, 2003
Alpharetta
Ryan Boslet rose before daybreak for a 7 a.m. "voluntary" conditioning
program before school that everyone on his team showed up for. Often cranky that
early, he was excited this morning. He had just received his first recruiting
letter, from the University of Memphis, the day before. He chatted all about it
to his friend, noseguard John Hafferty, as they drove to school.
The first part of the morning program consisted of four drills. The last one
was the suicide drill, where four players raced across the basketball court,
touching different points and turning to run the other way.
At about 7:30 a.m., Sean Hafferty, John's brother, was racing against Ryan
and trailing badly. "He was killing us," Sean said.
Ryan touched the baseline, turned and toppled over. Head coach Bill Waters
stood at the top of the key, shocked that Ryan failed to brace himself. While
players thought Ryan might have tripped, Waters suspected something much worse.
Maybe a seizure, he thought as he started CPR and told the players to go into
the locker room.
Soon Ryan's parents arrived, watching the coaches press on his chest and
breathe into his mouth. They saw school staff rush out with a new portable
defibrillator that no one knew how to use; they had been trained minimally on a
different model.
Sandy Boslet saw her son's gray coloring. "I took one look at him and knew he
was dead," she said. "I knew deep down in my heart he was gone."
She envisioned his spirit rising from his body, and felt if she talked, it
might return. "C'mon baby," she said. "Come on back down."
To Ryan's parents, the ambulance seemed to take forever to get to the school,
and to crawl through Thursday morning suburban traffic to the hospital. "Hurry
up and go!" Chris Boslet screamed at the other cars.
According to the Fulton County medical examiner's investigation, almost an
hour elapsed from the time Ryan collapsed and when he arrived at North Fulton
Regional Hospital.
The emergency room staff put a breathing tube into Ryan and continued CPR.
His parents sat at his feet for an hour. "He's 17 and healthy and we gave him
all we can," a doctor told them after the efforts failed. He was pronounced dead
at 9:24 a.m.
The reaction: Outpouring of emotion
The nearly 3,000 students at Chattahoochee heard the news of Ryan Boslet's
death in a special morning announcement. Car accidents and illness often claim a
life or two each year. This hit closer to home.
"You experience loss, but not where someone collapsed at school," said
Chattahoochee principal Robert E. Burke. "There's a remembrance of the event and
where it occurred. And it just is more personal."
The day Ryan died, grief counselors and local clergy tended to Derrick
Plankenhorn's 750 classmates at Southeast Bulloch, where principal John Frazier
noted, "We've dealt with death and dying, but this is the first time a student
has dropped dead on campus."
Psychologists encouraged students to talk through their feelings by writing
letters or poems, drawing pictures or posters. That sentiment was delivered by
the armful to the boys' homes.
A new shockwave unfolded for the Plankenhorns and Boslets. In their sons'
deaths, they discovered how many people these boys had touched.
The Plankenhorns stood in line five hours to greet everyone at the
visitation. At Trinity Baptist Church, the crowd of more than 1,000 overflowed
from the sanctuary and closed-circuit TV room to outdoors. People talked about
how Derrick had prayed with them and motivated them. His attitude: If I can do
it, you can do it.
"Even as his mother, I did not realize the depth of his life," Billie Jean
Plankenhorn said, weeping. "I just didn't realize because he wasn't flamboyant.
He didn't say anything. I don't think he realized how many people he had
touched."
The following day, another 1,000 people attended Ryan's funeral at Johns
Creek Baptist Church. The following week, as many as 20 kids spent the night in
the Boslets' basement, some walking off with T-shirts and souvenirs. Finally the
parents duct-taped a sign to the wall asking that nothing be removed.
News reports linked the two deaths, and the Boslets and Plankenhorns wondered
how the other was doing.
After several weeks, Chris Boslet contacted the Plankenhorns, and they talked
for an hour. They exchanged cards, news clippings and photos of their sons.
"I read where Derrick was always smiling and cheerful," Boslet said. "They
could have been writing about Ryan."
"You hear about people who lose children and you stop and say, 'That must be
terrible.' But until it happens to you, you don't know how you'd feel," Billie
Jean Plankenhorn said. "For it to happen like it did with Derrick, and to know
another boy died the next morning, now I know what it's like when someone loses
a child. I know."
The aftermath: 'Can't blame' anyone
Autopsy results came back from the state crime lab. Toxicology reports found
no foreign substances, relieving the parents of rumors that Derrick and Ryan may
have been taking supplements. Their deaths occurred the same week as that of
Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler, who died from taking ephedra.
Derrick died of natural causes --- "acute cardiac dysrhythmia complicating
cardiac enlargement," meaning that an electric disturbance to his heartbeat,
along with enlarged arteries, caused his heart to stop.
The condition would not have been detected during Derrick's chest surgery,
Bulloch County coroner Jake Futch said, because the enlarged arteries "were
inside the chamber of the heart. It's like when you pick a peanut out of the
field. You see the shell, not the peanut. You don't know it's in there until you
open it up."
The Plankenhorns blame no one. Like the Boslets, they never considered suing
anyone. They believe God allowed Derrick to witness to others on earth for 18
years, then called him to heaven.
"You can't blame nobody for something like that," Don Plankenhorn said. "You
can't blame God. God knows what's right."
Ryan's diagnosis, according to the Fulton County medical examiner's report
issued in May, was "cardiomegaly with biventricular hypertrophy." The walls of
his heart's two lower chambers had thickened, making his heart work harder to
pump blood --- until it finally gave out. Also known as hypertrophic
cardiomyopathy, the condition affects 1 in 200,000 people.
"Ryan was doing the worst thing you can do," his mother said. "Under that
stress, his heart muscle can't pump, went off rhythm and stopped. There's
nothing worse he could have been doing than lifting weights and running."
The Boslets learned that this can be hereditary but not detectable until the
late teens. They support a program to provide heart ultrasound tests, called
echocardiograms, to local athletes and students to help prevent another death
like Ryan's.
"If I only had that chance to know," Sandy Boslet said. "If my kid could have
been tested, he might be alive today. Gosh, if nothing else, this is a benefit
that could save someone else's life."
The future: Families must go on
Knowledge of what killed their sons eased some pain for the families. Still,
they are constantly reminded of their loss. Both families are still very
connected to the schools because younger sons play sports there.
On Mother's Day weekend, the Southeast Bulloch girls track team won the state
title, dedicating it to Derrick. Later that month, the senior class dedicated a
school record board on the infield across from where Derrick died.
"We've had closure," said coach Mike Sparks, who had administered CPR to
Derrick. "But you always remember."
At graduation, a single rose spanned the chair Derrick would have sat in.
On May 19, at halftime of Chattahoochee's spring football game, the Cougars
dedicated a boulder with a plaque on it --- a gift from the Boslets --- to Ryan
's memory. Their plan is to touch the rock before each home game. The expanded
weight room was unofficially christened "Bos Works," and Chattahoochee will keep
Ryan on the roster this season. "He's still with us in spirit," coach Bill
Waters said.
At their homes, these families have fashioned shrines to their sons' lives,
of souvenirs of profound meaning and poignancy.
The Plankenhorns' front door doesn't open because of so many items: the
never-worn, size 11 Adidas track shoes; a signed football his team placed in his
shiny blue coffin; his class ring with "WWJD" on the side; a PowerPoint
presentation a coach made of photos of Derrick set to music.
Outside, the home is landscaped with the plants sent from sympathetic
friends: gardenias, hydrangeas, azaleas, a magnolia, yellow roses. Billie Jean
Plankenhorn, 44, never leaves these five acres without Derrick's picture and
organ donation pin nestled over her heart. He left behind bone marrow, eyes and
skin that helped at least 26 people.
Don Plankenhorn, 48, digs out a glistening Browning .270 short mag rifle he
stowed under the bed, intended as a graduation gift for Derrick, an avid hunter.
Cradling the gun, he says softly, "I do wish I had given this to him. . . ."
In Alpharetta, Ryan's ashes rest in a cherrywood urn above the fireplace.
Huge scrapbooks hold cards and mementos, down to the $636.26 receipt when the
family closed Ryan's bank account. A note from the Georgia Eye Bank thanks them
for his donation. A before-and-after drawing by his little sister Brittany shows
six stick people smiling, then five people sad.
His hefty class ring hangs from a chain around his mom's neck, and she never
takes it off. "I don't like pretending he's not here," she said. "Just because
he's not here doesn't mean he doesn't live on."
He does in the computerized world of college football recruiters. The stack
of form letters is six inches high and grows by the day.
"It is extremely important that you ready yourself for a great senior year,"
an assistant coach wrote June 25. "The more you run and weight train this
summer, the better prepared you will be."
Chris Boslet, 46, and Sandy, 42, don't know how to tell the teams their son
has died. Or how to answer the innocuous question, "How many kids do you have?"
"How do you explain that one is 17 and will always be 17?" Sandy Boslet said.
"Every day there is something. It's extremely sad. To get through life, I hope
to see him again one day. That's all you can live on."
GRAPHIC: Photo: The Boslet family of (from left) father and mother Chris and
Sandy, and children Brittany, Cory and Chase pose with a plaque at Chattahoochee
High dedicated to the memory of Ryan Boslet./ JOEY IVANSCO / Staff; Photo: A
Wheaties box with Ryan Boslet's photo is part of the mementos the family has
left in place in his bedroom. / JOEY IVANSCO / Staff; Photo: Sandy Boslet never
removes from her neck a chain that holds son Ryan's class ring. / JOEY IVANSCO /
Staff; Photo: Illustration of cross with a fence in the background. / JOEY
IVANSCO / Staff; Photo: Derrick Plankenhorn was an avid hunter, and this
Browning .270 short mag rifle was to be his graduation gift. "I do wish I had
given this to him," Derrick's father, Don Plankenhorn, says. / JOEY IVANSCO /
Staff; Photo: A collection of mementos from Derrick Plankenhorn's life occupies
a prominent place in the family's home in Stilson. / JOEY IVANSCO / Staff;
Photo: Donald and Billie Jean Plankenhorn (left), with son Brian, attend a
ribbon cutting at South Georgia's Southeast Bulloch High of a board listing
state track records dedicated to son Derrick. / JOEY IVANSCO / Staff
ME: Part 1 of a 3-part series about the dangers that high school athletes risk.
LOAD-DATE: September 8, 2003
Copyright 2003 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
September 7, 2003 Sunday Home Edition
SECTION: Sports; Pg. 1D
LENGTH: 3462 words
SERIES: PLAYING WITH DANGER
HEADLINE: PLAYING WITH DANGER: Policies, finances put high school athletes at
risk: Suddenly lost;
Two very different Georgia athletes and their families became linked when a
similar fate struck both nearly simultaneously
BYLINE: MICHELLE HISKEY
SOURCE: AJC
BODY:
Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2003
Billie Jean Plankenhorn had just put a dish of pork roast and potatoes in the
oven around 5 p.m. when the phone rang. Son Derrick had fallen during track
practice at Southeast Bulloch High School, his brother said.
With three boys in sports, she wasn't overly worried. She'd been to the
emergency room many times, and she knew how Derrick tended to milk his injuries
for attention. She got in her 1996 Olds Ciera and pulled out onto the dirt road
in Stilson, a South Georgia community between Statesboro and Savannah that is so
small it has no post office.
At 7 the next morning, a phone rang in another kitchen 190 miles north.
Sandy Boslet had just fed her three younger children breakfast. At first she
thought the caller was joking about her oldest son, a football star at
Chattahoochee High School in north Fulton County.
"Ryan is down. He's unconscious. You've got to come to school," his best
friend told her.
In a minute she changed out of her pajamas and with husband Chris dashed off
in his company car out of the cul-de-sac of $300,000-plus homes into rush hour
traffic.
Fourteen hours separated the calls that first warned these families that
their seemingly healthy sons were in trouble.
Derrick Plankenhorn, a scrappy overachiever, never met Ryan Boslet, a gifted,
huggable giant. They came from very different worlds: Derrick, 18, lived in
rural peanut and cotton country, and Ryan, 17, in a well-to-do, congested
Atlanta suburb.
Their lives converged through death, when they collapsed while running at
routine practices. Both their hearts stopped so completely and suddenly that
neither put his hands out to break the fall.
Almost six months later, the sudden loss of these athletes from undetected
heart ailments continues to reverberate through two communities, and the state.
Both campuses were devastated by deaths witnessed by dozens of students, and
responded by creating memorials and rituals to celebrate Derrick's and Ryan's
lives.
And the families have reached out to one another, believing and hoping that
their boys were taken as a way of saving others.
Nov. 7, 1984
Savannah
Nine weeks premature, Derrick Plankenhorn was so sickly that on the 1-to-10
Apgar measurement of newborns, the doctor rated him a 2. He spent a week on
oxygen and a respirator, and his parents feared he wouldn't make it.
He left the hospital with a permanent dent in his chest, a condition known as
pectus excavatum. A congenital deformity found in one of every 400 births, it
typically causes no heart or lung problems but becomes more noticeable with age.
Derrick grew to deflect his physical flaws with humor. He joked that the
cavity would make a convenient cereal bowl for eating breakfast in bed.
He would always occupy the smallest percentile on the doctor's height-weight
chart. At home he always came up short against his brother Brian, two years
older, a star quarterback who needled him without mercy.
The two grew to the same height --- 6 feet 2 --- but at 160 pounds, Derrick
was 50 pounds lighter. Rawboned is the word some use in South Georgia. His red
hair reflected his feisty spirit, said his mom, Billie Jean, a kindergarten
paraprofessional.
"Derrick always had to work harder," his dad, Donald, a welder and fitter,
recalled. "He would not quit."
Derrick tried out for teams Brian starred on, and doggedly played defensive
end and long snapper for the Region 3-AA Southeast Bulloch Yellow Jackets.
Coaches tagged Derrick as the quintessential overachiever, who motivated lazy
players with twice his talent.
Chad Nighbert remembers his first day as the team's defensive coordinator.
"When he told me he was the starting defensive end, I was shocked. No way,"
Nighbert said. "His size didn't tell the whole story."
Part of Derrick's drive came from his Baptist faith. Even when the family
slept in, Derrick drove himself to church.
"I want to be known for all the things I help do on earth and the people I
help save," he wrote in a school autobiography project in elementary school. His
interim plans were less certain: "Ten years from now I hope to be still alive."
He believed that he was called by God to make the most of his modest athletic
gifts. His favorite verse was I Corinthians 9:24: "Run that you may obtain the
prize."
Some prize: While Brian got the nickname "Big Plank", Derrick was "Baby
Plank." As a way to break free of his brother, Derrick went out for track in
early 2002. His dad told him bluntly what almost everyone thought: "You are
wasting your time. You can't run with those black boys."
The team had room for someone at 400 meters. Derrick stepped up.
He won his first race, anchored the relays and ended the season fourth at the
state meet. His coach wasn't sure how to honor such an anomaly. So Derrick got a
new award: "Surprise of the Year."
"Track gave him the confidence," his dad said. "I could see a difference in
him. He wasn't in his brother's shadow. He was his own person."
Derrick had a new nickname: "White Lightning," inspiring a fellow student to
later pen these lines:
"At the end of the race, when it's all over and done, people would sit back
in awe and say, 'That white boy sure can run!' "
Oct. 23, 1985
Atlanta
Christopher Ryan Boslet was born in perfect health at Northside Hospital, the
nation's busiest maternity ward, weighing 8 pounds, 10 ounces. He never stayed
on the doctor's size charts. In his Little League team photos, he stands a head
taller than his teammates.
His feet would grow to size 15. "I couldn't find shoes that big. That was the
hardest thing," said his mom, Sandy, an interior designer and decorator.
The oldest of four children, Ryan possessed a firstborn's self-confidence and
the physique, talent and will to dominate whatever athletic pursuit he tried.
Besides the typical team sports, he completed the first of four week-long,
marathon Bicycle Rides Across Georgia when he was 11.
By seventh grade, he stood 6 feet and topped 200 pounds. "He was already as
big as some of the kids on the [Chattahoochee High School] varsity," said George
Moser, who coached Ryan's North Fulton Cougars to a 22-0 record. Ryan's size and
speed as a defensive tackle made him co-MVP.
Ryan enjoyed the obscurity of that position. His easygoing personality, his
niceness to school geeks and the birthday roses he brought to his girl pals ---
his behavior didn't match the hard charger others saw on the field. One teacher
wrote an apologetic note to Ryan's parents after she assumed his girth made him
a troublemaker. "He's the sweetest child," she said.
By age 17, he was 6-4 and 270 pounds, with a mop of brown curly hair. When he
wore a bright green shirt, his best friend John Hafferty dubbed him "Shrek."
Ryan loved to eat anything from sushi to burned french fries.
The fall of 2002, he started as a junior for Chattahoochee, a perennial
Region 6-AAAAA contender. Despite a foot injury, Ryan had 45 tackles and three
sacks, forced a fumble and recovered another.
After the playoffs, he geared up to get in tiptop shape. He signed up with
trainer Brad Pope, who works with Atlanta Braves catcher Javy Lopez. The fall of
2003, Ryan told his family, "is going to be my breakout season."
Feb. 19, 2003
Brooklet
Derrick Plankenhorn practically pawed at the Southeast Bulloch track, eager
to get going on his last track season. The school was replacing its old concrete
oval with a soft rubber surface, so shin splints no longer would be a problem.
Shaving a few seconds off his 400-meter time could well earn him a state title.
If that happened, he might even take off his shirt. Two months before, he had
undergone surgery to put two metal rods in his chest, pushing out the prominent
indentation. Although doctors and his parents considered the improvement mostly
cosmetic, it gave Derrick a psychological boost. What sprinter wouldn't want the
thought of more lung capacity, even if it wasn't so?
His surgeon, a specialist in pediatric thoracic surgery, cleared him to
compete and scheduled a follow-up appointment for August.
"We had every reason to believe he would be fine," said Southeast Bulloch
principal John A. Frazier. "We had no reason to believe he wasn't in good shape
to be doing what he was doing."
Fueled by peanut butter sandwiches his mom fixed to give him energy, Derrick
launched into what was a light workout and, as usual, finished before anyone
else. There was one cool-down lap left, and he hooked up with his friend Ricky
Williams and they rounded the track's second curve.
Sprint coach Mike Sparks first thought Derrick had stepped off the inside of
the track and sprained his ankle. When he didn't get up, Sparks thought maybe an
errant shotput had smacked him. When Ricky started screaming, Sparks dashed
over.
Derrick was trying to catch his breath. Sparks called his name and Derrick
didn't respond.
Sparks started CPR. Distance coach Jim Higgins assisted, and at 5:03 p.m. a
manager called 911.
A volunteer fireman heard the call on his scanner and arrived with a
breathing bag. In eight minutes, an ambulance arrived and paramedics shocked
Derrick's heart with defibrillator paddles.
No response.
Derrick's little brother Dustin, an eighth-grader who ran the 400 for the
adjacent middle school, watched the scene unfold. "In minutes he was purple,"
Dustin recalled. "It was bad."
On her way over, Billie Jean Plankenhorn heard that Derrick's condition was
worse than she first thought, and she sped to East Georgia Regional Medical
Center, eight miles past the school. About 150 other kids practicing sports at
the school saw Derrick's collapse, and now dozens filled the emergency room.
His mom peppered the coaches: "How bad is it?" None would look her in the
eye, and some were crying.
The only response: "They're working on him."
When hospital staff learned she was Derrick's mother, they ushered her into a
private room, tipping her off that something was very wrong. "I'd been in the ER
for broken bones and stitches, and they don't do you like that," she recalled.
An anguished Don Plankenhorn watched the staff treat his son. "Get up!" he
told Derrick. "Get up!" And to the doctors: "Don't quit working on him!"
At 6:27 p.m., they stopped. Derrick was gone.
Feb. 20, 2003
Alpharetta
Ryan Boslet rose before daybreak for a 7 a.m. "voluntary" conditioning
program before school that everyone on his team showed up for. Often cranky that
early, he was excited this morning. He had just received his first recruiting
letter, from the University of Memphis, the day before. He chatted all about it
to his friend, noseguard John Hafferty, as they drove to school.
The first part of the morning program consisted of four drills. The last one
was the suicide drill, where four players raced across the basketball court,
touching different points and turning to run the other way.
At about 7:30 a.m., Sean Hafferty, John's brother, was racing against Ryan
and trailing badly. "He was killing us," Sean said.
Ryan touched the baseline, turned and toppled over. Head coach Bill Waters
stood at the top of the key, shocked that Ryan failed to brace himself. While
players thought Ryan might have tripped, Waters suspected something much worse.
Maybe a seizure, he thought as he started CPR and told the players to go into
the locker room.
Soon Ryan's parents arrived, watching the coaches press on his chest and
breathe into his mouth. They saw school staff rush out with a new portable
defibrillator that no one knew how to use; they had been trained minimally on a
different model.
Sandy Boslet saw her son's gray coloring. "I took one look at him and knew he
was dead," she said. "I knew deep down in my heart he was gone."
She envisioned his spirit rising from his body, and felt if she talked, it
might return. "C'mon baby," she said. "Come on back down."
To Ryan's parents, the ambulance seemed to take forever to get to the school,
and to crawl through Thursday morning suburban traffic to the hospital. "Hurry
up and go!" Chris Boslet screamed at the other cars.
According to the Fulton County medical examiner's investigation, almost an
hour elapsed from the time Ryan collapsed and when he arrived at North Fulton
Regional Hospital.
The emergency room staff put a breathing tube into Ryan and continued CPR.
His parents sat at his feet for an hour. "He's 17 and healthy and we gave him
all we can," a doctor told them after the efforts failed. He was pronounced dead
at 9:24 a.m.
The reaction: Outpouring of emotion
The nearly 3,000 students at Chattahoochee heard the news of Ryan Boslet's
death in a special morning announcement. Car accidents and illness often claim a
life or two each year. This hit closer to home.
"You experience loss, but not where someone collapsed at school," said
Chattahoochee principal Robert E. Burke. "There's a remembrance of the event and
where it occurred. And it just is more personal."
The day Ryan died, grief counselors and local clergy tended to Derrick
Plankenhorn's 750 classmates at Southeast Bulloch, where principal John Frazier
noted, "We've dealt with death and dying, but this is the first time a student
has dropped dead on campus."
Psychologists encouraged students to talk through their feelings by writing
letters or poems, drawing pictures or posters. That sentiment was delivered by
the armful to the boys' homes.
A new shockwave unfolded for the Plankenhorns and Boslets. In their sons'
deaths, they discovered how many people these boys had touched.
The Plankenhorns stood in line five hours to greet everyone at the
visitation. At Trinity Baptist Church, the crowd of more than 1,000 overflowed
from the sanctuary and closed-circuit TV room to outdoors. People talked about
how Derrick had prayed with them and motivated them. His attitude: If I can do
it, you can do it.
"Even as his mother, I did not realize the depth of his life," Billie Jean
Plankenhorn said, weeping. "I just didn't realize because he wasn't flamboyant.
He didn't say anything. I don't think he realized how many people he had
touched."
The following day, another 1,000 people attended Ryan's funeral at Johns
Creek Baptist Church. The following week, as many as 20 kids spent the night in
the Boslets' basement, some walking off with T-shirts and souvenirs. Finally the
parents duct-taped a sign to the wall asking that nothing be removed.
News reports linked the two deaths, and the Boslets and Plankenhorns wondered
how the other was doing.
After several weeks, Chris Boslet contacted the Plankenhorns, and they talked
for an hour. They exchanged cards, news clippings and photos of their sons.
"I read where Derrick was always smiling and cheerful," Boslet said. "They
could have been writing about Ryan."
"You hear about people who lose children and you stop and say, 'That must be
terrible.' But until it happens to you, you don't know how you'd feel," Billie
Jean Plankenhorn said. "For it to happen like it did with Derrick, and to know
another boy died the next morning, now I know what it's like when someone loses
a child. I know."
The aftermath: 'Can't blame' anyone
Autopsy results came back from the state crime lab. Toxicology reports found
no foreign substances, relieving the parents of rumors that Derrick and Ryan may
have been taking supplements. Their deaths occurred the same week as that of
Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler, who died from taking ephedra.
Derrick died of natural causes --- "acute cardiac dysrhythmia complicating
cardiac enlargement," meaning that an electric disturbance to his heartbeat,
along with enlarged arteries, caused his heart to stop.
The condition would not have been detected during Derrick's chest surgery,
Bulloch County coroner Jake Futch said, because the enlarged arteries "were
inside the chamber of the heart. It's like when you pick a peanut out of the
field. You see the shell, not the peanut. You don't know it's in there until you
open it up."
The Plankenhorns blame no one. Like the Boslets, they never considered suing
anyone. They believe God allowed Derrick to witness to others on earth for 18
years, then called him to heaven.
"You can't blame nobody for something like that," Don Plankenhorn said. "You
can't blame God. God knows what's right."
Ryan's diagnosis, according to the Fulton County medical examiner's report
issued in May, was "cardiomegaly with biventricular hypertrophy." The walls of
his heart's two lower chambers had thickened, making his heart work harder to
pump blood --- until it finally gave out. Also known as hypertrophic
cardiomyopathy, the condition affects 1 in 200,000 people.
"Ryan was doing the worst thing you can do," his mother said. "Under that
stress, his heart muscle can't pump, went off rhythm and stopped. There's
nothing worse he could have been doing than lifting weights and running."
The Boslets learned that this can be hereditary but not detectable until the
late teens. They support a program to provide heart ultrasound tests, called
echocardiograms, to local athletes and students to help prevent another death
like Ryan's.
"If I only had that chance to know," Sandy Boslet said. "If my kid could have
been tested, he might be alive today. Gosh, if nothing else, this is a benefit
that could save someone else's life."
The future: Families must go on
Knowledge of what killed their sons eased some pain for the families. Still,
they are constantly reminded of their loss. Both families are still very
connected to the schools because younger sons play sports there.
On Mother's Day weekend, the Southeast Bulloch girls track team won the state
title, dedicating it to Derrick. Later that month, the senior class dedicated a
school record board on the infield across from where Derrick died.
"We've had closure," said coach Mike Sparks, who had administered CPR to
Derrick. "But you always remember."
At graduation, a single rose spanned the chair Derrick would have sat in.
On May 19, at halftime of Chattahoochee's spring football game, the Cougars
dedicated a boulder with a plaque on it --- a gift from the Boslets --- to Ryan
's memory. Their plan is to touch the rock before each home game. The expanded
weight room was unofficially christened "Bos Works," and Chattahoochee will keep
Ryan on the roster this season. "He's still with us in spirit," coach Bill
Waters said.
At their homes, these families have fashioned shrines to their sons' lives,
of souvenirs of profound meaning and poignancy.
The Plankenhorns' front door doesn't open because of so many items: the
never-worn, size 11 Adidas track shoes; a signed football his team placed in his
shiny blue coffin; his class ring with "WWJD" on the side; a PowerPoint
presentation a coach made of photos of Derrick set to music.
Outside, the home is landscaped with the plants sent from sympathetic
friends: gardenias, hydrangeas, azaleas, a magnolia, yellow roses. Billie Jean
Plankenhorn, 44, never leaves these five acres without Derrick's picture and
organ donation pin nestled over her heart. He left behind bone marrow, eyes and
skin that helped at least 26 people.
Don Plankenhorn, 48, digs out a glistening Browning .270 short mag rifle he
stowed under the bed, intended as a graduation gift for Derrick, an avid hunter.
Cradling the gun, he says softly, "I do wish I had given this to him. . . ."
In Alpharetta, Ryan's ashes rest in a cherrywood urn above the fireplace.
Huge scrapbooks hold cards and mementos, down to the $636.26 receipt when the
family closed Ryan's bank account. A note from the Georgia Eye Bank thanks them
for his donation. A before-and-after drawing by his little sister Brittany shows
six stick people smiling, then five people sad.
His hefty class ring hangs from a chain around his mom's neck, and she never
takes it off. "I don't like pretending he's not here," she said. "Just because
he's not here doesn't mean he doesn't live on."
He does in the computerized world of college football recruiters. The stack
of form letters is six inches high and grows by the day.
"It is extremely important that you ready yourself for a great senior year,"
an assistant coach wrote June 25. "The more you run and weight train this
summer, the better prepared you will be."
Chris Boslet, 46, and Sandy, 42, don't know how to tell the teams their son
has died. Or how to answer the innocuous question, "How many kids do you have?"
"How do you explain that one is 17 and will always be 17?" Sandy Boslet said.
"Every day there is something. It's extremely sad. To get through life, I hope
to see him again one day. That's all you can live on."
GRAPHIC: Photo: The Boslet family of (from left) father and mother Chris and
Sandy, and children Brittany, Cory and Chase pose with a plaque at Chattahoochee
High dedicated to the memory of Ryan Boslet./ JOEY IVANSCO / Staff; Photo: A
Wheaties box with Ryan Boslet's photo is part of the mementos the family has
left in place in his bedroom. / JOEY IVANSCO / Staff; Photo: Sandy Boslet never
removes from her neck a chain that holds son Ryan's class ring. / JOEY IVANSCO /
Staff; Photo: Illustration of cross with a fence in the background. / JOEY
IVANSCO / Staff; Photo: Derrick Plankenhorn was an avid hunter, and this
Browning .270 short mag rifle was to be his graduation gift. "I do wish I had
given this to him," Derrick's father, Don Plankenhorn, says. / JOEY IVANSCO /
Staff; Photo: A collection of mementos from Derrick Plankenhorn's life occupies
a prominent place in the family's home in Stilson. / JOEY IVANSCO / Staff;
Photo: Donald and Billie Jean Plankenhorn (left), with son Brian, attend a
ribbon cutting at South Georgia's Southeast Bulloch High of a board listing
state track records dedicated to son Derrick. / JOEY IVANSCO / Staff
ME: Part 1 of a 3-part series about the dangers that high school athletes risk.
LOAD-DATE: September 8, 2003
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