Rashidi Wheeler, a senior safety for the Northwestern football team, died Friday after collapsing during conditioning drills. He was 22.
A chronic asthmatic, Wheeler collapsed with his inhaler in hand during a standard running drill at about 5 p.m. Wheeler, a communications studies major, and about 60 teammates had been working out for an hour at the lacrosse fields on the Lakefill.
The cause of death will not be official until the Cook County Medical Examiner conducts an autopsy Saturday morning.
NCAA regulations bar coaches from any workout that takes place before practices officially start in mid-August, but medical trainers were on hand. Teammates summoned head trainer Tory Aggeler because Wheeler could not continue the drill, which teammates described as a fast-paced jog.
At a press conference Friday night with athletic officials and some players, Aggeler said Wheeler wanted to continue but knew he probably couldn’t, as he had difficulty breathing in an apparent asthma attack. Although Wheeler was alert and energetic, he took a turn for the worse about 10 minutes later and the paramedics were called. Aggeler administered CPR until two ambulances arrived each with five paramedics.
The vehicles were already nearby because of a call at the Technological Institute, said Alan Berkowsky, Evanston fire department division chief. Wheeler received treatment at the hospital for about 20 minutes before he died.
“Everything that could have been done was done,” Berkowsky said.
NU football coach Randy Walker compared the death to losing a member of the family.
“It’s exactly like they lost a brother. That’s exactly what it was,” Walker said. “Words can’t describe the grief that we all share together.
“(Telling the team) was the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to do in my life,” Walker said before choking up.
Senior linebacker Kevin Bentley, a close friend of Wheeler’s, first contacted Wheeler’s father George by phone. Wheeler’s mother, Linda Will, was notified later. Wheeler also had two brothers, one in his mid-20s and one in his mid-teens.
Wheeler’s death came two days after Minnesota Viking’s tackle Korey Stringer died of heat stroke suffered during a Tuesday afternoon practice in Mankato, Minn.
Stringer’s death raised concerns among NU families about the health of the practicing players, Bentley said.
“We were just getting all these calls from worried moms about dying,” Bentley said, but they took the warnings in stride, joking around while playing one of the week’s four or five Monopoly games.
Heat apparently was not the cause of Wheeler’s death, as the temperature in Evanston was 82 degrees late Friday afternoon.
“It wasn’t overly hot or humid,” said quarterback Zak Kustok. “It was actually cooler than a lot of other days that we’d been out drilling.”
Bentley said the workout began as one of the best they’d had.
“When we started out, we were just so thankful that the weather had been great,” Bentley said.
Wheeler passed his annual physical July 12 with nothing unusual except for his chronic asthma, for which he always had an inhaler in hand at practice as a precaution, Aggeler said. No additional rules govern play for asthmatics, but as the team’s “safety net,” Aggeler would make sure Wheeler stayed hydrated. As an unwritten rule, players would quit practicing without resisting or debating if Aggeler said they shouldn’t continue.
Bentley described the drill as a fast jog at best, not the grueling sprints that come later at training camp. Instead, the players would time themselves running progressively shorter distances, with recovery time in between. The drills are meant to give a base-line indicator of fitness going into training camp, and the players did not exercise with pads on, Walker said.
Wheeler was one of only two returning starters in the secondary. He was expected to shoulder the leadership position vacated by the departures of Rashad Morton and Harold BlackMonday, who both graduated last year.
Wheeler’s death came just after his breakout junior year, in which he exploded for 88 tackles after having just three in his first two years. He recovered his first fumble during NU’s Oct. 7 victory over Indiana, and he made a career-high 14 tackles during the Wildcats’ 47-44 double overtime win at Wisconsin on Sept. 23.
“He was definitely a big part of our success last year and was definitely going to be a big part of this year,” Bentley said.
Some players reacted with anger and frustration, while others sang hymns and prayed, Walker said, but their feelings could be summed up as “shock.”
Wheeler was part of a senior class that had catapulted from the bottom of the Big Ten in their freshman year to the co-Big Ten champions last year. Wheeler, Bentley, and fellow seniors cornerback Raheem Covington and running back Kevin Lawrence called themselves “the Cali boys” for their laid-back, care-free, almost surfer-like attitudes, Bentley said.
“My brother isn’t here,” Bentley said.
The Summer Northwestern’s Emily Badger contributed to this report.
