TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) - University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban endorsed a bill Tuesday aimed at reducing youth suicides by getting school personnel more involved in awareness and prevention.
Saban, speaking at a news conference, said suicide prevention matters to him after raising two children and spending four decades coaching young people.
“We’ve been very, very fortunate through the years to have very few players suffer issues and problems while we were coaching them, but we have had some,” Saban said. “It’s one of the most devastating things you have to go through, even as a coach.”
The Tuscaloosa News (https://bit.ly/21jBNl3 ) reported that a bill introduced in the Legislature would require annual suicide awareness and prevention training mandatory for all certified public school personnel.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Gerald Allen of Cottondale, is called the Jason Flatt Act after a 16-year-old who killed himself in 1997. The Senate Education Policy Committee unanimously approved the bill on Tuesday. It now moves to the full Senate for consideration
Flatt’s father, Clark Flatt, created the Tennessee-based Jason Foundation to raise awareness of youth suicide after his son’s death. Saban began working with the organization while he was the head coach at LSU.
Flatt said he began a partnership years ago with Saban, who was head football coach at LSU at the time.
“He’s been fantastic to work with throughout the years,” Flatt said. “He’s has done everything he could do for us.”
Flatt said he meets with Saban twice a year to catch the coach up on the foundation’s efforts and needs, and last May, he was explaining the Jason Flatt Act, which had just been adopted in Texas.
“He asked me why we had not brought the Jason Flatt Act to Alabama,” Flatt said. “I did not have a good answer except we did not have a crusader, we needed those contacts, and he told me as we were breaking up our meeting that he was going to work on that.”
Flatt said within hours, Allen and Gov. Robert Bentley had called him to find out more about the legislation and see what they could do to bring it to Alabama.
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