ST. GEORGE — With two thumbs up, Easton Oliverson has indicated that he is in his own World Series of recovery.
Updated Aug. 17, 9 a.m. to include information about Little League removing bunk beds and provide an update on Oliverson’s condition.
The family of the Snow Canyon Little League all-star baseball player, severely injured after an overnight fall from a dormitory bunk bed at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa., said Tuesday that the 12-year-old is quickening the usually slow process of coming out of sedation from a traumatic head injury.
“One of his doctors said that everything they have hoped Easton to be able to do in the last 12 hours, he has done and more,” the Oliverson family said in a statement provided to St. George News and other media outlets. “We believe that Easton’s prayer army is giving him the strength to make these strides.”
Meanwhile, on Wednesday morning, the Little League World Series said it has removed the bunk beds in place of single beds.
Also on Wednesday morning, Oliverson’s family said his breathing tube has been removed.
Oliverson’s family now says he was asleep in the overnight hours Sunday into Monday when Oliverson fell from the top bunk to the hard floor below, suffering fractures to his skull and cheekbone with his brain swelling from bleeding inside his skull.
After surgery early Monday at Geisinger Janet Weis Children’s Hospital in Danville, Pennsylvania, the family said Oliverson has been coming out of a medically-induced coma. In case the doctors didn’t say so, the outfielder and pitcher for the first team from Utah to ever reach the Little League World Series let a friend know it.
According to family members, Oliverson’s friend was talking to him over the phone and told him to put his thumb up.
Oliverson put his thumb up.
Trying to keep up the streak, the friend asked if Oliverson could put his other thumb up.
Up went the other thumb.
The thumbs up didn’t convey how tough the previous day had been for Oliverson and his family. The question wasn’t whether the young little leaguer was going to play for his team this weekend. It was whether he was going to survive.
“Just 36 hours ago, Easton was 30 minutes from passing away,” the family said in their group statement. “Now 36 hours later, he has a team of trauma I doctors who are in absolute awe of his tremendous progress.”
The team has rallied around their fallen teammate, adopting “Team Easton” as its nickname. They marched in a parade in Williamsport Tuesday kicking off World Series festivities.
Oliverson is being weened off fentanyl, the family said, and the respiratory therapist is also cutting back on oxygen therapy. A CT scan looking for brain anomalies came back negative. Still to come is a more thorough MRI scan of his brain which can make a deeper scan for injuries within the skull and internal bleeding.
And the praying continues.
“At this moment, we would like to ask for prayers that the results from Easton’s MRI will come back good,” the family said.
Safety of bunk beds
Like all teams at the 20-team international tournament that starts Wednesday and continues until a champion is crowned Aug. 28, the Snow Canyon team is staying in a large dorm room at what is called “The Grove” that had seven bunk beds.
Their coaches are in two adjacent rooms. Other Little League officials and liaisons are there, but The Grove has a no parents allowed policy (Oliverson’s father Jace is there as an assistant coach).
Jon Girardi, sports editor for the Williamsport Sun-Gazette, said he doesn’t remember any similar incident involving a player being seriously injured after falling from a bunk bed.
“I can’t think of any sort of injuries like that happening in the past at The Grove to be honest,” Girardi said. “I would say it’s quite rare.”
Russ Hafer, who was a part of the Canadian team at the 1974 Little League World Series, told St. George news he fell out of a bunk bed when he was there. He ended up with a sprained wrist.
Now a manager at a wealth investment firm in Calgary, Canada, he said he was surprised the Williamsport event was still housing its players on bunk beds.
“Kids are not used to sleeping in these narrow cots with no rails, surely they have changed since 1974 when I was there but I wonder how many kids this has happened to over the years and it seems like an unnecessary risk for kids to be exposed to,” Hafer said.
Like any sport, injuries on the field at the Little League World Series aren’t as rare, ranging from pulled muscles to being hit hard by a pitch.
But off the field, the number of kids injured yearly in bunk bed accidents could fill Fenway Park. The Consumer Product and Safety Commission says 36,000 bunk bed-related injuries occur every year to children in the United States. About nine to 10 kids per year die from those injuries.
A large majority of the injuries are to children under 6 and about 75% of the injuries are from falls. The most frequent injuries are to the head and neck.
A federal law went into effect in July 2000 that all bunk beds manufactured or imported for sale in the U.S. must include guardrails on the top bunk if it is more than 30 inches from the floor.
A picture of The Grove’s bunk beds from a 2019 guide by Little League International for parents with children in the World Series shows that the beds have no rails on the top bunk. It is unclear if the beds have since been replaced and the World Series wasn’t played in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Grove is in the process of its first renovation in 20 years.
On Wednesday morning, Kevin Fountain, senior director of communications for Little League International, told St. George News the bunk beds have been replaced.
“Out of an abundance of caution, Little League has made the decision to remove all bunks from within the dorms and have each bed frame individually on the floor,” Fountain said.
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