Barta: UI has learned more about rhabdo in past year

IOWA CITY - Just over a year after 13 University of Iowa football players were hospitalized for rhabdomyolysis, UI Athletics Director Gary Barta said Tuesday that the incident continues to be a learning experience for coaches and staff.

“We're much more informed, we're much more educated,” Barta said during a visit to the UI Faculty Senate after a faculty member asked about changes the department has made since then. “It was a scary moment, hopefully one we learned a lot from.”

The Athletics Department has followed the recommendations made by a university committee in the wake of that incident last winter, Barta said. That includes gathering data to learn more about rhabdo and about how to better manage workouts to keep it from happening again, he said.

Dr. Ned Amendola, director of UI sports medicine, is working with other researchers around the country to gather baseline data on athlete rest and training and how certain factors impact cases of rhabdo, Barta said. It's a question of knowing more about prevention, he said.

A UI report presented to the state Board of Regents last March said it was most likely an intense, high-volume squat lifting workout that caused the January 2011 hospitalization of 13 UI football players for rhabdomyolysis, a condition that can result from overexertion of skeletal muscle and that can cause kidney damage. A five-person UI committee spent seven weeks investigating the incident. The report determined that no UI athletic trainers or coaches were negligent or reckless when they planned and supervised the workouts, and that the 13 players were in no way responsible for their own injuries.

All 13 players were eventually medically cleared, and Barta said Tuesday that officials are still not sure exactly why the illness happened in this case. However, he said, they continue to learn more about the condition, and it's likely more common that has been reported nationally in sports.

Another Faculty Senate member commented about a recent basketball controversy. History Professor Katherine Tachau, told Barta she was “concerned that we have coaches who think that passion is the same thing as throwing temper tantrums.”

“I think it's a bad model of male leadership for students,” Tachau said.

Men's basketball coach Fran McCaffery last month slammed a chair to the floor during a timeout after receiving a technical foul during a game. Video footage of the incident that garnered thousands of views on YouTube.

Barta said he had several conversations with McCaffery about the incident because “clearly that was a situation that I felt crossed the line.” Barta said Tachau's comparison that faculty members are not allowed to throw temper tantrums is “apples to oranges” due to the level of competition and adrenaline during a game compared to a classroom situation, but he said he understood her views, after Tachau said “anger management is something we can all work on.”

“Point well taken,” Barta said.