Garden Grove High Football Player Dies

Westminster (myFOXla.com) - Grief counselors are expected on the campus of Garden Grove High School Monday to help students deal with the death of a football player who died inexplicably after collapsing on the field during a Friday night game.

Kevin Telles, a 6-foot, 206-pound fullback assigned to block for the ball carrier on the play, collapsed without taking a hit, with 1 minute and 30 seconds to go in the game against Westminster High, the Orange County Register reported.

The youth was seen convulsing, then motionless.

"It wasn't a collision; it wasn't a hit," coach Joe Hay told the newspaper. "He just collapsed. He was gasping for air.

Preliminary results from an autopsy done Saturday failed to show the cause of death, pending more tests, coroner's investigators told the newspaper.

Teammates and friends gathered at the center of the Garden Grove High's football field to remember Kevin on Saturday morning. Hay, a first-year coach at the school, called him the "heart and soul" of football team.

"He's a good man ... one of the best," he said."Anything you would ask out of a kid from a coach, he did all those things. ... He was just the heart and soul of this program."

When the gathering broke up, his teammates huddled and shouted "Kevin Telles!"

"Everyone just got a chance to pay their respect," Hay said. "Some kids chose to speak. Some kids chose not to. I thought it was the best thing to do for Kevin and our guys."

Telles, who lived in Santa Ana, was pronounced dead at Huntington Beach Hospital after efforts to revive him failed. The game was played at Westminster High.

His 18-year-old brother, Robert, was among those in the stands.

"Football was his everything and he proved it on that field last night that it was everything," he told the newspaper.

After Kevin collapsed, officials called the game, with Garden Grove winning 9-0.

The death was the first related to a football game in Orange County in nearly eight years.

Matthew Colby of Costa Mesa High died Sept. 29, 2001, from bleeding and swelling of the brain. He collapsed and lost consciousness in the Sept. 28 game's first quarter, just minutes after complaining to Costa Mesa coaches of a headache and nausea. Colby was pronounced brain dead the morning after the game.

A study prepared by the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury reported that in high school football nationwide that in 2008 there were seven deaths directly related to participation in football activities. That was the most since 2001, when there were eight. In 2008, there were 0.47 directly- related deaths per 100,000 participants.