Have you ever felt like you are living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that.

More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life,

you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called

Becoming You. People think, okay, an A-plus life is not available to me, but there

is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get

your podcasts. Dale Lloyd had been an athlete his entire life. He was rarely sick, rarely injured.

So when he went off to play football at Rice University, his parents weren't worried.

Then came a practice in late September of 2006.

It was supposed to be a light workout, but the team was coming off of a humiliating loss, and the coaches made

them run a lot. Dale collapsed on the field during practice. By the next day, he was dead.

He was 19 years old. The autopsy showed that Dale had sickle cell trait, not sickle cell disease, which can be debilitating,

but the trait, something that's generally harmless, unless the body is pushed to the point of extreme exertion.

It turned out Dale wasn't the first football player to die this way. At the time, sickle cell trait was the leading cause of death in college football.

That changed in 2010, after Dale's parents sued the NCAA.

As part of the settlement, the NCAA agreed to mandate testing for sickle cell trade

at every Division I football program

and to put protocols in place to protect players.

The result was dramatic.

Sickle cell related deaths in college football essentially disappeared,

which is why what happened at Bucknell University in July of 2024 should never have happened

at all.

The NCAA have clear protocols.

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