Joshua Mileto of Sachem East High School football's team, 16, was killed Thursday while he and teammates performed a drill that involved carrying a log. The drill was used by the Navy SEALs for conditioning, and the team used it as a bonding exercise. The log fell on Mileto and killed him, per Suffolk County homicide detectives. No other players were injured in the incident.
Carlin Schledorn, who graduated from Sachem East and played his junior year, said that carrying the 12-foot log was used to build chemistry throughout the team -- and it wasn't easy.
"It's very big. It's like a tree, and it's a challenge for people who weight lift," he said via the Associated Press. "Five or six people do it at once. I feel horrific for the team and coaches because I know them and they are all great men."
Although school officials did not comment on the drill, Douglas Casa, the head of the Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut, had some concerns about the difficulty of the exercise for high schoolers. "There's so much potential for things to go wrong that I would really want people to think twice before doing something like that," he said, also mentioning that the drill was designed for "different clientele."
The school district commented briefly on the accident, saying that it was "devastated by this horrific accident and words cannot express the grief we feel as a school community."
Mileto was given CPR on-field before being rushed to Stony Brook University Hospital. He was proclaimed dead at the hospital.
Per CBS New York, the accident occurred at 8:40 a.m. when two of Mileto's teammates fell and the log struck his head.