WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — A 12-year-old baseball player from Utah underwent surgery Monday for a severe head injury he suffered after falling from the top bunk of a bed in a dormitory housing players for the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
Easton Oliverson, who plays for the Snow Canyon Little League baseball team, was flown to a Pennsylvania hospital about 40 miles from the annual tournament, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.
Oliverson’s uncle, Spencer Beck, told the newspaper that his nephew “went through pretty traumatic surgery to get to where he’s at, but the doctors are all really positive.”
“Just a really simple thing — something that we’ve all probably done is fall off the bed, but he hit his [head] pretty hard, it sounds like,” Beck added.
Kyle Hafen, the team’s coach, told KSTU that doctors were waiting for swelling in Oliverson’s brain to subside before evaluating him further.
Teammates and Little League International officials said that the boy fell an estimated six feet onto a hardwood floor, The Washington Post reported.
According to the St. George News, Oliverson suffered skull and cheekbone fractures as well as bleeding between his skull and the outer covering of his brain. A message sent Monday to Snow Canyon parents stated that the boy was recovering in the intensive-care unit following a successful surgery, the newspaper reported.
“Had that other player not been wakened by him falling, he may not have made it,” Beck told the Tribune.
The Snow Canyon team is slated to play its first game of the Little League World Series at 1 p.m. on Friday on ESPN.