Le monde
Fighting
Lives The Taylor Haugen Foundation Marks Ten Years of Protecting Young Athletes
By T O R I P H E L P S
f you can’t readily name the worst day of your life, consider yourself lucky. For Brian and Kathy Haugen, it’s all too easy: August 30, 2008. That’s the day their fifteen-yearold son, Taylor, sustained a fatal abdominal injury while playing high school football. In the decade since, the Haugens have survived that unimaginable loss in the only way they can: by throwing themselves into the fight to protect other children—and parents—from a similar fate.
equipment had existed, it would have been on our son,” says Brian.
Soon after Taylor’s death, which shook the entire community of Niceville, Florida, the Taylor Haugen Foundation was launched to bring awareness to abdominal injuries and provide protective gear to young athletes who play contact sports. As it turns out, an item costing less than eighty dollars would likely have saved Taylor’s life. “If we had known this
The Haugens’ donations and awareness campaigns are specifically directed at young athletes, their coaches, and governing bodies because collegiate and professional athletes regularly use rib protectors to prevent abdominal injuries. (Although Kathy points out that at least three NFL players were out due to such injuries at the time of this interview. “It’s
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That equipment, a rib protection shirt whose panels mold and then harden to its wearer’s torso, is now part of their everyday vocabulary. Through the foundation’s Youth Equipment for Sports Safety (YESS) program, over 4,500 athletes in seventy-five schools across the country have been outfitted with those shirts.
