Death count hits 13 for football coach

James "Rod" Sanderson last Thursday became the 13th player to die while playing for Lumberton (N.C.) High School football coach Mike Brill, according to the Fayetteville Observer.

The 5-foot-9, 280-pound lineman died from a blocked carotid artery at age 17.

"We brought him up to varsity last year, and he didn't get a whole lot of playing time," Brill told the newspaper. "But he was one of the hardest workers on the team. He was working to be one of the strongest players on the team. His 560 (pounds) in the squat was a team record."

Sanderson apparently collapsed at home, long after practice ended on June 14.

According to the report, Brill remembers something his mother told him after one of his South Robeson players died years ago.

"I was going to get out of coaching, but she had a long talk with me," Brill told the newspaper. "She said, 'When the good Lord goes to the rose garden, he doesn't pick a weed. He gets the best flower out there. God just needed him more than we did.'

"That's what I believe now, and that's what got me through this time."

From The Morning Call