The Navy SEAL who led a workout in September with the Tufts men’s lacrosse team that sent nine students to the hospital with a dangerous medical condition lacked the appropriate credentials to run such a session, an independent review found.
“To our knowledge, the third party who led the Navy SEAL workout did not have any credentials that qualified him to design, lead, or supervise group exercises,” said an executive summary of a report the university commissioned from an outside law firm and a sports medicine consultant.
“To our knowledge, he was not familiar with … NCAA policies and regulations, or Tufts Sports Medicine Operational Policies and Guidelines,” said the summary.
The five-page summary shed light on the workout that led to 24 players being diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis, a condition commonly known as “rhabdo” that’s associated with overtraining and can be life-threatening.
Nine of the players were hospitalized, officials said, all of whom have recovered.
The report summary said the Tufts director of sport performance, unnamed in the document, had invited a “third party” to lead a conditioning session with the lacrosse team.
That third party, also unnamed in the report, was a recent Tufts graduate who had served as a lacrosse team equipment manager. He is also a current Navy SEAL, the summary said.
According to the summary, the SEAL workout included around 250 burpees, or squat-like exercises, and other maneuvers over a roughly 75-minute period.
Only about 40 percent of the 61 players who participated were able to complete the workout without some form of “modification,” the summary said.
“The Tufts Director of Sport Performance approved the workout plan the same day he received it,” the summary said. “Notably he did not share the workout plan with others in the athletics department in advance but texted a copy of the workout plan to his staff an hour before the students began the workout.”
That meant staff did not have enough time to “evaluate and assess” the appropriateness of the workout, according to the summary.
It said the sport performance head later offered shifting accounts of the SEAL workout but “all were inappropriate for the men’s lacrosse team.”
A Tufts spokesperson declined to name the director of sports performance or say whether he was still employed by the school.
“The university takes this situation extremely seriously and has already begun taking a number of appropriate steps in response to this incident to ensure it does not happen again,” said spokesperson Patrick Collins. “As is our standard practice, we will not comment publicly on personnel matters.”
The summary said the SEAL who led the workout declined to speak with the outside investigators.
Collins said Tufts would not disclose the SEAL’s name.
The summary included a number of recommendations for Tufts to implement going forward, including ensuring that all outside parties leading workouts for student athletes have the appropriate training to do so, and establishing a process for continuing education for coaches on players with medical issues.
In a separate statement, university president Sunil Kumar and athletic director John Morris said they’re pleased that all affected students made a full recovery and have resumed normal activity.
“We would like to extend our sincere apologies to the members of the men’s lacrosse team, their families, and others affected by this situation,” the administrators said. “We know this has been a challenging time, and we are grateful for your patience and participation as the investigators did their work. We are confident that adopting the recommendations will result in a better and safer training environment for all of our student-athletes.”
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.
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