A mere 12 hours after an official from the National Collegiate Athletic Association spoke to the Blue Bears about the dangers of drug and alcohol use, student-assistant coach Wayne Majors landed in the hospital, an all-too-vivid reminder of the previous night’s lecture.

Police say 20-year-old Jamie Lee Usher had been drinking and fell asleep at the wheel Saturday morning when his car crossed the center line on Jake Alexander Boulevard and hit Majors’ vehicle head on. Majors, a 22-year-old senior at Livingstone, remains in critical condition at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte today.

“We talked to all the kids before the next practice,”Livingstone head coach Greg Richardson said Tuesday. “You think, ‘It’s not going to happen to me,’ but here’s a guy who was coming to practice, doing what he was supposed to do, and he gets hit by a guy who made a bad decision.”

In Richardson’s three years as head coach of the Blue Bears, he’s had the NCAA come to the campus before each season to talk about drug use. The NCAA does not require schools to have the sessions; Richardson makes them mandatory.

“All the kids attended, including Wayne. That’s one of the lessons we want the kids to understand,”Richardson said. “The next morning, to have to get up and deal with the same thing we’d been talking about was very sobering.”

Majors’ accident also put football on the back burner this week at Livingstone. Instead of focusing solely on cross-town rival Catawba and Saturday’s season-opener, the Blue Bears find themselves worrying about Majors’ condition.

“We try to tell our kids that in life, there’s a lot of adversity,”Richardson said. “Even though there are things that may be going bad, you’ve got so many things going on at the same time in your life you can’t just drop the others to take care of one.

“It’s been a rallying point for the kids,”he added. “They feel like because of the kind of kid that Wayne Majors is, they’ve got to go out and do some good things for him.”

Richardson said the football team isn’t planning a special tribute for Majors, like putting a patch on the uniforms or a sticker on helmets. Tonight, though, all the Blue Bears will leave practice and skip the traditional mid-week meetings to visit Majors and his family at the hospital.

“Our kids carry Wayne in our hearts, so our permanent patch is already there,”Richardson said. “We don’t have to display anything. It’s going to be there, and it’s going to be in our efforts.”

Tonight’s visit will mark Richardson’s fourth trip in the last five days to Carolinas Medical Center. He missed the Blue Bears’ scrimmage on Saturday, spending all day at the hospital while Majors underwent brain surgery. On Sunday, Richardson returned to meet with Majors’ parents, who drove down from Port South, Va.

Richardson said he hopes tonight’s team visit shows Majors’ family how much the Blue Bears support their former teammate and current coach.

Majors’ accident occurred at 6:30 a.m. Saturday as he left his home on Clancy Street and was driving to his first practice as a student-assistant coach. The former linebacker decided to give up his on-field job and concentrate on coaching, which he wants to pursue after graduation.

Majors knows football, Richardson said, and was attempting to learn the ins and outs of coaching: handling players, managing practice schedules and working with other coaches.

“Wayne’s going to be a fine coach, and I talk positively because I think he’s going to come out of this thing OK,”Richardson said. “He’s someone that anyone would want their son to be coached by because he’s a fine individual.”

For sure, he’s someone who belongs on the football field. Even Livingstone’s rivals realize that and have been hoping for a speedy recovery.

“After every practice, we have a silent prayer,”Catawba linebacker Darris Morris said. “It’s much larger than football when something like that happens. You have to take a moment to say a prayer for him.”

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Contact Steve Hanf at 704-797-4287 or shanf@salisburypost.com .