On Jan. 31, University President Sunil Kumar and Tufts’ Director of Athletics John Morris released a letter to the greater Tufts community. The letter included an executive summary of the independent investigation into a Tufts men’s lacrosse team workout held last fall that led to 24 of the 61 student participants being diagnosed with Exertional Rhabdomyolysis.
Of the 24, nine students were hospitalized and eventually discharged to return to play. The condition, commonly known as rhabdo, can be caused by overly strenuous physical activity and is often associated with severe pain and skeletal muscle injury.
The workout was led by a recent Tufts graduate and current Navy SEAL, a former equipment manager for the team. After the initial incident, Tufts hired two independent investigators, student-athlete health expert D. Rod Walters II and Lewis Brisbois partner Randy Ailment, to determine exactly what happened, evaluate university leadership’s response and suggest areas of reform in conditioning and training procedures for university personnel.
Walters and Ailment’s work took three months and included over 60 interviews with Tufts students, parents and employees.
The report’s key findings included evidence of a strong Navy SEAL influence over team culture and that Tufts did not have an official policy for vetting third parties who work with students prior to the workout.
The Navy SEAL’s workout plan was not shared by the Tufts Director of Sport Performance with the necessary Tufts employees sufficiently in advance.
Additional findings included that the Navy SEAL workout did not follow the principles of acclimatization commonly used in exercise science and that reports of rhabdo among team members developed slowly before escalating quickly.
Initial reports by the university significantly undercounted the number of athletes diagnosed with rhabdo.
“At first, the university attempted to provide an accurate, ongoing headcount of student athletes with rhabdo in its updates,” Patrick Collins, Tufts’ executive director of media relations, wrote in a statement to the Daily. “However, as the number of cases grew rapidly and students and their families sought treatment at a variety of health care facilities both in and out of state, the situation became so fluid that we no longer could accurately report the number of cases.”
Collins declined to comment on whether any disciplinary action had been taken against the anonymous Navy SEAL who had led the workout and the Tufts Director of Sports Performance who failed to follow protocol when approving the workout. He acknowledged that efforts on the part of university staff had fallen short of where they needed to be.
Collins wrote that there was a lapse in the execution of university policy during the course of the incident and agreed with the report’s assessment that Tufts needed to have stricter third-party guidelines.
“It is clear from the investigators’ findings that, while some university policies were followed, others were not or were not followed comprehensively,” Collins stated. “Additionally, the investigators have pointed out gaps in our policies and have recommended that we adopt new policies to address them, which we will do.”
Several policies and procedures were recommended for Tufts administration to implement in the executive report. These included a regular review of all operations within Tufts Athletic Training and Tufts Strength & Conditioning regarding policies and procedures.
Additional recommendations included a strengthened vetting process for guests who will be leading workouts, mandating that no student be cleared to participate in physical activity until certain conditions have been met.
“We accept the report’s findings and will begin implementing all of the recommendations immediately with the goal of having enacted them by the beginning of the next academic year,” Collins wrote. “We are taking immediate steps to begin training coaches and others as recommended by the investigators.”
In their message to the Tufts community, Kumar and Morris extended their apologies to the members of the lacrosse team, their families and all others who had been adversely affected by the situation.
The message noted that parents of the lacrosse players, in particular, were critical of Tufts’ failure to coordinate medical care for student-athletes. Kumar and Morris reiterated their confidence in the prescribed recommendations, which they hope will instill a healthier culture for all student-athletes.
“The university did not follow its established protocols in coordinating medical care for our student athletes,” Collins wrote. “We are committed to better training, communication and improved policies and procedures to ensure this does not happen again.”
