The presidents of the Board of Regents and the University of Iowa say they have asked for a report on the cause of the illness that required 13 Hawkeye football players to be hospitalized. The athletic department held a news conference Wednesday where a doctor identified the disease as Rhabdomyolysis , which is a muscle injury syndrome and he says can be caused by extreme workouts.
The director of football operations could not give exact details of the workouts, but said they were similar to what the team has been doing for years. U-I president Sally Mason and Regents President David Miles says they have agreed to a 90-day timeline for the report.
See the Regents/university release below:
The health and well-being of students at all of Iowa’s Public Universities is of paramount concern to the Iowa Board of Regents and to the University of Iowa. As such, the recent hospitalization of 13 University of Iowa football players following pre-season workouts is a cause for grave concern. Our immediate focus is the full recovery of each of the young men involved, and we continue to closely monitor the medical condition of our student-athletes. In that regard, we commend the UI Athletics Department for its quick response to the student-athletes’ health needs, and wish to express our confidence in the care that they are receiving at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.
“Going forward, it is essential that we take the necessary steps to understand the factors that led to this to ensure that it never happens again,” said David Miles, president of the Iowa Board of Regents. “This morning President Sally Mason and I agreed to a 90-day timeline for completion of a root cause analysis of the events that led to the need to hospitalize these young men. At President Mason’s direction, this analysis was already underway shortly after the incident, and I appreciate the University’s efforts to involve independent medical experts in the process from the earliest moments.”
“The primary aim of this analysis will be to identify, to the extent possible, the root causes of this incident in order to create and implement effective preventative measures to ensure this does not happen in the future,” added Sally Mason, president of the University of Iowa. “It is an essential responsibility of the University to determine what is likely to have caused this rare condition among so many young men at one time, and to share those findings.”
Results of the analysis will be presented to the Board of Regents upon completion.
David W. Miles Sally Mason
President President
Board of Regents, State of Iowa University of Iowa