Two days after a tragic rope drill accident left him unconscious, Revelle College sophomore Leon Roach was declared brain-dead on Sept. 5 and taken off life support at Scripps Memorial Hospital.
Nineteen-year-old Roach drove down to San Diego that day to practice with his pole vaulting team. He had swung over the crossbar on a rope hung from a tree when he overshot the padded mat and slammed his head against the concrete.
‘Leon died doing what he loved to do most,’ his mother Mary Ann Roach said. ‘I take great comfort in the fact that he was where he wanted to be.’
When it came down to choosing between UCSD and UC Berkeley, Roach’s passion for pole vaulting took precedence ‘mdash; there was no room for him on the team at Berkeley, so he turned the school down for UCSD and its track team.
‘When we went to visit Coach Darcy and Tony [at UCSD], they made him feel like a track star,’ Mary Ann Roach said. ‘They were so happy to have him, [and] he really felt like the team was a family.’
A Huntington Beach native, Roach majored in biochemistry, and was looking forward to a career in science. Recently, Roach went on a 13-day motorcycling trip to Mexico and Canada with his father and brother, Curtis Hendrick.
‘I was always proud of him and joked he was my little prodigy,’ Hendrick said. ‘Everything I did, he did ‘mdash; he always aspired to be like me, but surpassed me in every way.’
The brothers, only five years apart, had a mutual love of pole vaulting. They shared the same high school record in the sport ‘mdash; 15 feet and 4 inches.
Roach’s teammate, sophomore Allison Rudd, describes him as an ‘incredible teammate and friend with the most amazing character, work ethic and positive attitude.’
‘He was so confident that when he would die he’d go to heaven, and had such a hope in the fact that God had a greater plan and a calling for his life,’ Rudd, who was also his Bible study partner, said.
After Roach’s death, his wish to have his organs donated was fulfilled. His organs went to an 8-year-old boy waiting for a kidney, a 50-year-old woman who had been on dialysis for seven years and a mother who suffered severe heart damage after childbirth.
In a 2001 study, the American Journal of Sports Medicine ranked pole-vaulting as having the highest death rate per participant of any sport.
In 2002, 19-year-old Penn State student Kevin Dare died during a pole vaulting attempt and suffered fatal head injuries. His father, Ed Dare, tried to make the sport safer for athletes by helping design and market the first helmet made specifically for pole vaulters.
‘Leon wouldn’t have wanted helmets to be required,’ Hendrick said.
Mary Ann Roach emphasizes the fact that they are not blaming anyone for the accident.
‘We hold no hard feelings toward UCSD or the coaches. Leon loved everyone down there,’ she said.
All three track and field coaches contacted for this story refused to comment on the exact nature of the drill Roach was performing at the time of his death.
Readers can contact Sarah Alaoui at [email protected].