Seattle, WA – A lawsuit has been filed in King County Superior Court by former University of Washington football player, Emeka Megwa, against the University alleging medical negligence in the handling of his ACL rehabilitation.
At age 17, Emeka Megwa was a highly recruited running back out of Fort Worth, Texas. After suffering an ACL injury in high school play, he enrolled at UW over other prominent football programs specifically because UW assured him that the team could manage his rehabilitation.
Per SI at the time:
One of the more heavily recruited players in his class, Megwa chose the Huskies over Alabama and Notre Dame while fielding nearly 40 offers from the likes of Oklahoma, LSU, Georgia, Ohio State, Texas, Texas A&M, Florida and many more.
“I like all the schools across the country, but Washington was different from the player standpoint to the coaches, too,” Megwa told CBS Sports in July when he announced his college decision in a streaming interview. “The coaches were really friendly and the players. It was like one big brotherhood. It’s all competition and I wanted to be a part of a team like that.”
The lawsuit alleges that after Jimmy Lake’s coaching staff left the program, new staff and trainers ignored the recovery plan set by surgeons and repeatedly pushed Emeka in workouts beyond the limits of his recovery, by giving him painkillers and publicly ridiculing him.
Megwa stresses “I hope this will raise awareness about how student athletes should be treated during recovery. We deserve to have the right people making the right decisions, and not be treated as if we are expendable.”
Andrew Ackley, representing Megwa, emphasizes,
“Where a student athlete has a major surgery, surgeons should say what the athlete is ready to do—not trainers or coaches. This was not a risk-of-football injury. It was a totally preventable reinjury if they had just followed medical advice.”