Trouble In The Water
The drowning of 22-year-old basketball standout Deng Mayar of Salt Lake City was not the first of a student-athlete at a Utah reservoir. What can be done to prevent another?
Pro players who played in the US don’t often die young. In fact, no pro player who played college sports in Utah has ever died at a young age.
In college sports, however, it has been a different and sadder story.
The latest Utahn or student-athlete to have died while in Utah was Deng Mayar AKA Deng Ador. The Salt Lake City resident was swimming with a male friend at Blackridge Reservoir in suburban Herriman when a 911 call reported the two were “in distress” in the water.
According to police, Mayar’s friend Su Matufaga reentered the water after seeing Mayar struggle about 35 yards from shore. Matufaga was unable to save his friend, a college basketball standout who prepped at Judge Memorial Catholic and played most recently for Nebraska-Omaha as a graduate student.
Deng was 22.
"Our entire program is devastated to learn of Deng's passing. After competing against him (at North Dakota) for two years, we were elated to add him to our team and he made tremendous progress this summer,” said UNO coach Chris Crutchfield in a statement. “Deng was a joy to be around and made our culture better. We will miss him greatly. Jodi and I, along with our entire program, send our hearts and prayers to Deng's family, friends and teammates."
On a very personal note, I’ll miss Deng, too. He was a student at the school at which I taught, and was always a fun-loving, easy-going kid. He was a young man who respected his elders and paid close attention to his grades, enabling him to move on to Judge, where academics are as rigorous as the pursuit of greatness in athletics.
There is absolutely no question at all that Deng in his No. 10 jersey (left, in video) was always front and center during Nebraska-Omaha’s postgame trash can celebrations that went viral:
UNO was always a team on the rise last season. They started with a 5-9 record and yet improved as the year went on, winning the 2024-25 Summit League postseason title and played in the NCAA Tournament.
Blackridge, located about 25 miles southwest of Utah’s capital city, has had a dubious history of adult men drownings since it opened. Mayar, like several other older males, was not wearing a lifejacket at the time of his drowning.
Herriman City Police closed the reservoir until Monday, August 18 and issued this statement in lieu of Mayar’s tragic passing:
At its shortest point, Blackridge is only 400 feet across. That is deceptive, and yet so are the troubles reservoirs pose to anyone—including people who can really swim.
“My son also lost his life in this reservoir 11 years ago. I want to send all my love and condolences and support to this family! Also, I want to mention that even if you are a fish in the water and swim very well, as my son did, things can still happen,” said Heather Jarvis Petersen of South Jordan.
That is absolutely heartbreaking to have to read, and still there are squeals of Mayar or his friend not wearing life jackets all over social media.
Deng’s death was not the first untimely and tragic passing of a student-athlete at a Utah reservoir.
There were similar cries heard after Utah State cornerback Andre Seldon Jr and his teammates went cliffdiving last summer at Porcupine Reservoir, an accident from which Seldon drowned in the murky depths, below.
What made matters worse was that the Aggies had to go on and play a full season without Seldon, who had just transferred to Logan from New Mexico State, where he was beloved:
As Americans, there is a tendency—especially now—to sugarcoat necessary information that could be vital to the general public. That is not the case in Wales, where drownings of young men in reservoirs there are so prevalent that its national news service is posting warnings with exclamation points.
The first suggestion makes sense: wetsuits should be worn when entering any reservoir. The reason is simple enough; water temperatures are still cold enough during the summer months that body shock can occur—something suspected as a possible contributor to Seldon’s death and yet was never confirmed.
Another is that the water in reservoirs are usually filled with harmful bacteria. Remember how many open-water swimmers in Paris got sick during the Olympics? That was after event organizers thoroughly disinfected the Seine River beforehand.
That’s not the worst part, though. Strong currents—often hidden—at reservoirs do underscore the importance of wearing a life jacket for anyone, at any age. And then there are underwater hazards such as pipes and pumps, along with hidden machinery.
To get a young adult male to wear a life jacket or wet suit though may require the establishment of a rule by Utah reservoirs. Either that could be part of the solution, or it may be time to ban open-water swimming at these reservoirs altogether. «
Overthink This Photo 📸
That man bun you see on top of that white and powder blue jersey belongs to Tim Ream. Mr. Manbun is a defender for Charlotte FC, one of the teams, I mean, KFC franchises in Major League Soccer that has the name FC.
Short for football club, I didn’t know that guys like Tim Ream are taking this title literally, and thinks that he can stick his entire hand out in his own penalty box and yet avoid a penalty kick.
What’s more is that center referee Tori Penso didn’t “see” Team’s hand sticking out like he was on punt block team for the Carolina Panthers and didn’t whistle the US national team defender for a foul. ( I can see his hand out in this grainy, blurry photo!)
Penso is also a digital marketer. Who knows; maybe she’s got some side deal going with Ream—or Charlotte FC, or one of the many KFC FC’s.
Book ‘Em Brian!
Yes, our book review is back, and just in time for baseball’s annual pennant race.
This week’s book: SINGLED OUT: THE TRUE STORY OF GLENN BURKE by Andrew Maraniss
You cannot go too far in your search for books on baseball without seeing a book on Glenn Burke, Major League Baseball’s first openly gay player. I counted four in all, including one by Burke himself before he died from AIDS in 1995 and one for teens and young adults.
In the summer of 1972, the 19-year-old Burke even had a cup of coffee in Ogden, mere days after he was drafted by the LA Dodgers in the 17th Round of the MLB Draft and signed a contract on June 11 that included a $5,000 bonus in his native Berkeley, Calif. home. Burke didn’t last long in Ogden, playing just 14 games there and hitting .200. In six years though, he moved his way up through the minors and played in the 1977 World Series with those famed Dodgers of Ron Cey and Co.
What is important about this book by Maraniss is that it is an analysis of Burke’s life, full of eyewitness accounts from former teammates including Oakland A’s legend and current TV analyst Shooty Babitt, who also grew up in the East Bay with Burke, though Babitt was a few years younger than his mentor. Burke was also a standout high school basketball player who committed to the University of Denver but got homesick and left, and then bounced around two junior colleges in the Bay Area.
Instead of opening and staying with the harrowing account of Burke’s later years after he was blackballed by MLB—something Burke himself did expertly in his co-authored book with Billy Bean—Maraniss celebrated Burke’s baseball-playing exploits from the minors on up to The Show, where Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda’s gay son met Burke and the two consummated a relationship. This led Lasorda to push to have Burke traded to Oakland, where the player finished his career in 1979. «
#BullshitOrNot
Alright, we’ve got some Oregon Duck in the news, taking a shot at Shedeur Sanders “somebody” in this interview:
And so naturally the Duck “ducks” the question a journalist asks, saying that he (quack) was talking about the assembled media (quack-QUACK!).
Thanks for reading; be safe and be well. I’ll see ya next time. «