According to a police complaint, a college wrestler died of heat stroke after coaches refused the 20-year-repeated old’s appeals for water as a disciplinary action after a particularly intense school session.
Grant Brace, a sophomore at the University of Cumberland, died in August 2020 after a practice at the Kentucky institution where instructors forced pupils to sprint up a 200-foot ‘Punishment Hill.’
During the practice, the participants were instructed to “throw their water bottles on the fence and not touch them,” according to reports.
Brace eventually fell behind his teammates on a sweltering summer day and begged the coaching staff for water, which cops allege they denied owing to the student’s “poor performance.”
Brace was discovered on the ground near the school two hours after the exercise, unconscious and grasping the grass near a pool of his own vomit by students and employees.
According to detectives, he died of exertional heatstroke, a highly avoidable illness that does not manifest itself without warning symptoms.
‘Guys, I need water. Get me some water,’ Brace reportedly urged his teammates during an outdoor portion of the practice August 31 – the first day of wrestling conditioning for the students.
Brace’s requests became increasingly frenzied, according to detectives from the Williamsburg Police Agency, but they were still denied, even as he began speaking gibberish and convulsing, witnesses told the department.
Brace, who had aspirations of becoming a champion, told employees that he couldn’t see or stand before his death, which has been shrouded in secrecy for the past two years.
Brace’s family sued the school, as well as school authorities and individuals associated with the wrestling program, for wrongful death in August.
The case, which is still pending, does not specify the cause of death.