Focus Story Structure Exercise

There are 20,000 injuries in high school football each year — 12 percent of them permanently disabling the victims.  Thirteen youths died last year.  Thirty-five percent of the injuries are to the neck or head.  Most critics blame the helmet. 

 

Pete Stenhoff 16, a junior at Chula Vista High School in Redmond, California, is confined to a wheelchair for life. 

 

Stenhoff was hurt in a game during his senior year. He rammed his head into the ball carrier’s chest and cracked vertebrae in his spine. .  “I knew the risks involved when I decided to play football,” he says, and adds, “I wish I would have known just how bad it could be.”   At the time of the accident, he weighed 210 pounds, and now he only weighs 172 pounds.  He didn’t graduate with his class is and trying to get his diploma by taking correspondence courses.  He is not bitter.