On a bookshelf at his St. Paul home, former Vikings guard Corbin Lacina keeps a photo of his late teammate Korey Stringer. He sees it nearly every day.
On the inside of a kitchen cabinet at his home in Savage, former Vikings guard David Dixon has a photo of Stringer and a trading card depicting his former roommate. He said he sees it “whenever I’m going to get some spices or something.”
On a wall in his home office in Scottsdale, Ariz., former Vikings punter Mitch Berger has a frame that includes photos of him with Stringer and a poem he wrote to honor his good friend at his memorial service 20 years ago.
On Aug. 1, 2001, Stringer, a 27-year-old offensive tackle, died of heatstroke complications suffered during a Vikings training camp practice the previous day in stifling temperatures in Mankato. His memory has continued to live on.
“He was irreplaceable as a player but also irreplaceable as a person,” Berger said. “He was a leader, a captain and a guy everybody loved. There was a big hole in our hearts for Big K because he meant something to everybody.”
lawsuit, filed in 2003 by Stringer’s widow, Kelci Stringer, against the NFL, was settled in 2009. The only thing made public in the settlement was that an institute, with the NFL as a partner, would be founded to help prevent heat-related illnesses in football and other sports.
After her husband’s death, Kelci Stringer sued the Vikings in January 2002, but that $100 million wrongful-death suit was dismissed in 2003. And she sued helmet maker Riddell in 2003 before a confidential settlement was reached in 2011.
Kelci Stringer, 47, now lives in Charlotte, N.C., where she works as a life coach in the field of psychology. Before that, she practiced in Panama City, Panama, from 2018-20. And prior to that, she lived in New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta, where she grew up, and at one point owned a fashionable women’s shoe store.
Korey and Kelci Stringer were married for four years and their son, Kodie, was 3 when his father died. He is now 23 and living in Los Angeles, where he plays the keyboard and piano and produces electronic music on his computer. He played high school football in Atlanta, spending some time at his father’s old position — right tackle — but admits he was “never that interested in sports” and wanted to “do my own thing.” Kodie, who bears a striking resemblance to his father, earned a music degree at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Fla.
Kelci Stringer, who has not remarried, also has a daughter, True Harrison, 10, whose father is no longer in a relationship with her mother.
Kelci Stringer is active with the Korey Stringer Institute, being listed as a founder and spokesperson. Looking back at her husband’s death, she said the institute is something good that has come out of a tragic situation.
“Twenty years is a long time, but (Stringer’s death) seems like it was just yesterday,” she said. “(The 20th anniversary) will be bittersweet. But 20 years is a nice time to do a new chapter, so that’s what I’m looking forward to is creating more exposure (for the institute). It’s still a process, but the work the institute has done has been phenomenal.”
know Kelci Stringer and Stringer’s longtime agent, Jimmy Gould, well while serving as an expert witness throughout the legal proceedings.
Casa vowed to make researching heatstroke his life pursuit after he nearly died in August 1985. As a high school student, he collapsed on an extremely hot day in Buffalo, N.Y., while competing in a 10-kilometer race at the Empire State Games. He credits savvy medical officials for saving his life by immediately cooling his body temperature.
The Korey Stringer Institute is housed in a facility that Casa said includes a “state-of-the-art heat lab” used for research. The institute gets about $3 million a year in funding, much of it from the NFL, which was one of three founding partners along with Gatorade and the University of Connecticut. Now, there are nine partners.
“The NFL has bent over backwards to be supportive to the Korey Stringer Institute,” Casa said.
The institute has 23 staff members and 62 volunteers. It works with pro leagues and colleges and with all 50 states and the District of Columbia to help enhance safety measures for high school sports. Casa said there is still much work to do in high school football, with too many schools conducting conditioning drills in the middle of the summer without an athletic trainer on hand, but that the NFL and college football have made great strides related to heatstroke issues.
Since Stringer’s death, the NFL has made many changes, and has avoided any recurrence of such a tragedy. Gone are two-a-day practices during training camp, which were once the norm and often lasted three hours apiece. Heat indexes and hydration are monitored closely, proper water breaks are mandatory and practices in pads are limited. Medical staffs are more educated. And teams have sideline tents and 100- and 150-gallon tubs available with ice water for players to use if needed.
While there wasn’t as much education about heatstroke in 2001 as there is now, Casa testified during legal proceedings that Stringer’s death would have been prevented had the Vikings properly cooled him immediately. His body temperature soared to as high as 108 degrees on the day he collapsed.
