Stadium press box reopens in accident aftermath
Safety of steep stairs was also issue in ’07 at All High Stadium
The Buffalo Public Schools this weekend will reopen the press box at All High Stadium, where a Buffalo News reporter suffered life-threatening injuries last week in a fall down a steep set of metal stairs.
The press box, which was closed and marked off with yellow crime-scene tape after sportswriter Tom Borrelli tumbled down the stairs at last week’s game, will be open for the Harvard Cup series game between McKinley and Riverside high schools, said school district spokesman Stefan Mychajliw.
Mychajliw did not respond to a request from The News to comment about another sportswriter last year telling School Superintendent James A. Williams that the stairs were dangerous after the writer took a fall down them himself.
“I actually said something to Dr. Williams that day,” said Mark Adair, who puts out two high school football publications. “I said I can’t believe you guys haven’t redone the stairs.”
He said Williams did not respond to him at the time.
Mychajliw still has not responded to The News on why the All High Stadium renovations completed in 2007 originally had plans for a new elevator and press box that were scrapped.
A spokesman for LP Ciminelli, the contractor that did the work, said that the elevator was removed for budgetary reasons and that the school system had problems with the design of a new press box.
What remained is the original access to the circa-1929 press box: a steep metal ladder, a trapdoor and a catwalk that reporters, announcers and coaches must navigate to get to the press box.
Borrelli, 51, was covering the game for The News on Saturday when he scaled the dozen or so metal stairs to the press box at halftime, apparently hit his head on a steel girder and fell backward down the stairs.
Borrelli, the beat writer for the Buffalo Bandits and the first sportswriter inducted into the National Lacrosse League Hall of Fame, remains in critical condition in the intensive care unit at Erie County Medical Center.
He is paralyzed from the neck down and breathing with a respirator. His wife, Karen, a member of The News sports staff, and his father, George, the paper’s retired political reporter, hope his condition will improve once extensive swelling goes down.
A number of people have come forward to say they also have either fallen or almost fallen down the same set of stairs.
“I came down and whacked my forehead, because you’re looking down at these stairs, they’re treacherous,” Adair said. “And I whacked my head on a beam. And down I went. Just instantaneous.”
Adair, who publishes Upstate Football Weekly and Sidelines magazine, said the fall happened when he was at a Harvard Cup game in the 2007 season, shortly after All High was renovated. He was not seriously injured.
Longtime Grover Cleveland High School coach Art Serotte said he will not be doing color commentary at Saturday’s game because of the danger.
“I am not going up there,” Serotte said. “My children don’t want me to go up there. My players don’t want me going up there. I can work the field. No way am I going up in that press box again.”
His play-by-play man, Rich Kozak, earlier told The News that he had hit his head on the same girder in 2001 and was saved from falling backward only because a colleague grabbed him.
Serotte and Kozak were in the press box at the time of Borrelli’s fall, heard the noise and came down the stairs to see what had happened.
They said they saw a man sprawled at the bottom, bleeding from a head injury. Serotte, who worked out regularly with Borrelli, said he could not recognize him.
Kozak’s recounting of how he nearly fell brought forward accounts of others who have struck their head on the girder and nearly fallen.
He got e-mails from a former coach who said his pregnant wife nearly fell down the stairs and from another coach who said he hit his head on the girder and nearly fell. Neither could be reached to comment.
“There is absolutely nothing on this planet that I’m afraid of, but I think twice about going up those stairs,” said Dave Ricci, a freelance sportswriter who has covered games at All High for the last eight years. “Just the incline, it’s almost like you’re just climbing straight up a ladder.
“I’ve been in a lot of press boxes, but with high schools in this area, that’s the most dangerous to try to get into.”
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