Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 11, 1990                   TAG: 9003122967
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: F-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

AN ATHLETE DIES A WARNING THAT WENT UNHEEDED

But as details emerged during the week that followed, the story took on larger proportions. It became a story not only of one young man's illness, but an illustration also of a larger illness gripping American society - and gripping, in particular, young black men in American society.

No, this is not another discouraging example of illegal drugs felling a talented youngster in the prime of life. In that, perhaps there is a small measure of solace to be taken.

This is, however, an example of a young man in whom a heart ailment had been detected, who apparently had been told to give up basketball because of it - and who nevertheless continued to play. And in that, there is no solace.

At 23, Gathers was at an age when few people consider much their own mortality, when for most life seems to stretch endlessly before them. Besides, he was an excellent athlete who was looking forward to a professional career in the Natonal Basketball Association. That Gathers himself might disregard his physicians' advice is not extraordinary.

But Gathers was not playing basketball in a vacuum. If his coaches at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles were kept fully informed of his medical condition, as his physicians maintain, why was Gathers allowed to keep playing? If Gathers had been a benchwarmer, would physicians' warnings have been better heeded?

And beyond the immediate context of Gathers' life and death, there lies the broader question of a message society sends to young men of athletic bent, and particularly to young black men: Forget all else, athletics is the track to a prosperous career.

For a tiny handful, that can be true, and Gathers got much farther along the road than most. For the vast majority, however, the message is as false as can be, and grievously so.

Only rarely, of course, is it a heart ailment that stops the traveler. Usually he is derailed because he's a half-step too slow, or an inch too short, or 20 pounds too light, or simply not quite as good as the handful who do make a lucrative go of it.

Yet it can amount to much the same thing. Whether the warning comes in the form of a medical diagnosis or in the more routine form of an honest assessment of athletic skills, it is still a warning to get off the athletic track and move to a more promising one.

Far too often, though, the warning goes unheeded, and far too often it goes unheeded out of necessity: No alternative route has been constructed.

In Gathers' dramatic case, the consequence of not heeding the warning was death. More often, it is a wasted life.