“The university’s No. 1 priority is the health, safety and well being of all of our students including our student-athletes,” Rosen said.
However, a concerned parent shared a message from the UH athletic director alerting parents of three positive tests. Subsequent testing identified in at least nine more cases, according to one player who was hospitalized.
The team’s coach, Diego Bocanegra, would not talk about his players’ conditions in a call with Channel 2 Investigates but did admit his strength and conditioning coach is on the outs with the program.
“As of right now, Minor Bowens does not work with the soccer team any longer,” Bocanegra said.
Channel 2 Investigates did ask for a clarification from the university, a public institution, on the coach’s employment status but Rosen said they were not “at liberty to discuss any personnel situation.”
I just read about rhabdomyolysis on web md. Sheesh. Sounds like they weren’t given sufficient recovery time after hard workouts or maybe even pushed too hard, to the point of complete muscle breakdown. 50% of people with this diagnosis end up with kidney problems.
This isn’t good for a program on the rise. Hopefully Coach Bocanegra can address the concerns and get the players healthy and trusting their trainers again.
I had rhabdo after I joined a LA Fitness and was “helped” by an over zealous personal trainer. I am surprised this would happen at UH with athletes. I was way out of shape but, even if not peak condition, these players are athletes and the conditions had to have been extreme.
Today picked up the story. Nothing new on it though.
In a statement to TODAY, the University of Houston said it “takes very seriously the wellbeing of all of our students and fully investigates any issues that arise related to the health or safety of members of our campus community.” The school added it could not comment on any specific matters involving the health of individuals or personnel actions due to federal privacy laws.
“The University is aware that there are questions about rhabdomyolysis and the supervision of workouts within our Athletics program,” the statement read. “The training regimen for each sport follows NCAA guidelines and we are always looking at every aspect of strength and conditioning to determine how we can improve results while ensuring the safety of our student-athletes.”
Minor Bowens is no longer listed in the UH Athletics Staff Directory. Guessing he’s been let go.
Also seeing a number of tweets from track athletes upset about someone being let go in the athletic department and I’m assuming they’re talking about Bowens since he was also the Track S&C coach.
_While the school was not at liberty to discuss Bowens’ employment status last Friday, the school did send a snapshot following a Texas Public Information Act request showing Bowens was terminated Tuesday. _
The University of Houston has since removed Bowens’ professional profile from its site.
I’m assuming that “physical punishment” meant push-ups or running laps.
Channel 2 Investigates began digging into what was happening at the University of Houston athletics department and how the university was addressing the danger to its students. We obtained a series of emails that shows players were hospitalized, with some admitted overnight. When asked for his thoughts on the workout considering so many players came down with rhabdo, Rosines said, "It must have been one intense workout.”
As the medical crisis was unfolding within the team, emails show Bowens sending himself links to articles titled, “Rhabdomyolysis: Causes, Symptoms & Treatment” as well as “4 Things You Didn’t Know about Rhabdomyolysis.”
Bowens was terminated after our initial report.
Channel 2 Investigates found more cases of rhabdo in student-athletes. In February 2018, Senior Associate Athletics Director Dejuena Chizer wrote in an email that the athletic department had “a few cases of Rhabdo.” The associate director of sports medicine distributed a prevention guideline. Records show those receiving the emails included Bocanegra and Bowens.
Then, two months prior to the most recent cases, Bocanegra in an email to a player’s mother wrote: "I want to reiterate that I have implemented several changes to help prevent this injury or any other similar injuries from happening in the future. For example, we no longer use physical punishment within our team. I removed it from our weight room manual.”
The report, conducted by Audit and Compliance Committee of the University of Houston System Board of Regents, concluded former assistant strength coach Minor Bowens “ignored guidelines” that prevent rhabdomyolysis, or rhabdo, a severe syndrome caused by muscle damage. Bowens was fired in February.
