The parents of Bucknell football player Calvin “CJ” Dickey Jr. say they appreciate the charges against the coach

The parents of a Bucknell University football player who died after collapsing during the first day of training camp in 2024 said Tuesday they appreciated a decision by Pennsylvania’s attorney general. to institute criminal proceedings to the strength and conditioning coach who oversaw the session.

Calvin ‘CJ’ Dickey Jr. was a college freshman in July 2024 when Mark Kulbis told him and other football players to do 100 “up-downs,” also known as “burpees,” along with full-body plank exercises, the attorney general’s office said. Dickey had sickle cell disease, a medical condition that can increase the risk of serious injury or death after extreme exercise.

“We’re at the point where we’re just happy that someone is being held accountable for our son’s death,” Calvin Dickey Sr. said. from Land O’ Lakes, Florida, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “We just want to get through the process and we’ll leave it up to the attorney general to continue to follow the evidence.”

Prosecutors announced Monday that Kulbis had been charged with misdemeanor aggravated hazing and crimes of involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and hazing.

“While Calvin Dickey’s death is tragic, Mark Kulbis did not contribute to it and is not responsible for it,” his attorney, Barbara Zemlock, said in a written statement. “The strength and conditioning program that was implemented was appropriate and consistent with the training Mr. Kulbis received, and with applicable standards.”

Sickle cell disease, which is diagnosed through a blood test, usually does not affect people’s daily lives. But it can cause reduced blood flow and muscle breakdown after intense exercise, dehydration or high body temperatures. In very rare cases this can lead to collapse and death.

After other deaths involving athletes with sickle cell disease, the NCAA in 2010 began requiring new Division I athletes to be tested for the condition and warning coaches that athletes with it should slowly build up their intensity during training and get adequate rest and recovery.

Dickey, who stood 195cm tall and weighed almost 136kg, had grown up playing sports and decided to focus on football his freshman year of high school, his parents said. He played both offensive and defensive lineman, meaning he was often sidelined for the vast majority of games.

According to a federal lawsuit they filed against Bucknell last year, they didn’t know he had sickle cell disease until weeks before training camp. Calvin Dickey Sr. said he received assurances from the offensive line coach the day before camp was to start that his son would be protected.

But Dickey Jr. began struggling and fainted while doing exercises that Kulbis had imposed as punishment for the players who did not perform the exercises correctly, the lawsuit said. He was hospitalized and died two days later.

While it is rare for coaches to be criminally charged in cases where athletes collapse and die, in some cases they have.

In Georgia, a girls basketball coach and an assistant coach were subsequently charged with murder 16-year-old Imani Bell suffered heat stroke and died in 2019 during a training session that was held outside despite a heat advisory being in force. That case remains pending. The school district settlement of the family’s lawsuit for $10 million and agreed to rename the gym in her honor.

Since his death, they have channeled their grief into a foundation which helps increase awareness of sickle cell trait in athletes and promotes the health of student-athletes. It provides scholarships and organizes a program for football linemen called “50 Cal Big Man Camp,” after the number he wore.

“Those are the kinds of things right now that put a smile on my face and touch my heart,” Nicole Dickey said. “We want to protect the next generation and share what we have learned.”

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Johnson reported from Seattle. Associated Press writer Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed.