Costa Mesa football player dies

Barry Faulkner

Matt Colby, a Costa Mesa High senior injured in Friday night’s

football game against Ocean View, died Saturday at UCI Medical Center

after his family chose to take him off a respirator. He was 17.

No cause of death was given. A coroner’s office spokesman said there

will be an autopsy.

Colby, who may have sustained a head injury during a collision on the

opening kickoff, appeared slightly disoriented on a game videotape for

two subsequent plays, Costa Mesa Coach Dave Perkins said Saturday.

The 6-foot, 185-pound Colby, whom Perkins termed “a big hitter,” is

what coaches refer to as a wedge breaker on kickoff coverage. The wedge

breaker’s assignment is to sprint full speed into a wall of blockers that

form a “wedge” in front of the ball carrier.

“He played the rest of that defensive series (following the kickoff),

then, after about two plays into the next defensive series, he came over

to me and asked to be taken out because he wasn’t feeling right,” Perkins

said of Colby, who earned second-team All-Pacific Coast League honors as

an outside linebacker last season.

Perkins, who gathered with players, family members, coaches and

administrators at the hospital after the game, said Kelli Colby, Matt’s

mother, made an announcement about Colby’s condition some time around

midnight.

“His mom spoke to the group and let everyone know that Matt wasn’t

coming back,” Perkins said.

In a statement released Saturday afternoon, Kelli Colby said that when

Matt left the field in the ambulance “he wasn’t able to breathe and his

heartbeat was gone. The ambulance driver revived him. When he got to the

trauma center, he was unresponsive and everyone worked really hard to

keep him alive by life support.”

After tests were done that concluded Matt had no brain activity, Colby

said the family decided to take him off life support.

“His family and I have agreed that Matt would want us to donate his

organs, so that maybe he could save someone else’s life,” Colby said.

In the statement, Kelli Colby also thanked Matt’s coaches and friends

from both Costa Mesa and Estancia, as well as friends of the family for

their outpouring of love and support.

Family members declined further comment.

A starter at defensive end Friday, Colby played the last two seasons

for Estancia’s varsity team, before transferring to Costa Mesa last

summer.

Costa Mesa Principal Diana Carey, who watched the game from the

Mustangs’ sideline at Westminster High, said she overheard Colby

complaining to trainers from both schools about his head hurting after

coming out of the game. Carey said she later heard Colby say he had

tingling in his hands and legs.

Observers said Colby then fainted, at which point Costa Mesa trainer

Steve Moreno and Ocean View trainer Virginia Terry telephoned paramedics.

Carey, who observed Colby lying flat on a trainer’s table behind the

sideline, said an Ocean View team doctor was administering to Colby

before paramedics arrived.

Neither trainer nor the Ocean View team doctor could be reached

Saturday.

Perkins, who made intermittent attempts to monitor Colby while the

game continued, said Colby was breathing “somewhat normally” after he

lost consciousness.

But the situation quickly became dire, said Perkins, who noted a

paramedic told him Colby was in “extreme distress,” before the ambulance

left the stadium.

A CT scan performed on Colby Friday night determined there was no

brain activity, said Kirk Bauermeister, Costa Mesa High School’s athletic

director.

Perkins said there was no family history of health problems, but noted

Colby had complained of a headache after the Mustangs’ Sept. 15 game

against Westminster.

“We got him checked out and he was cleared to play (the following week

against Centennial High of Canada). He never lost consciousness and he

had no other injuries in the three years I’ve coached him,” Perkins said.