Updated

A California high school student died on his sixteenth birthday after being hit with a softball in the chest during gym class.

Taylor Dorman was playing the improvised softball game "Over the Line" at his San Diego-area high school Wednesday when he was hit in the chest with the ball.

The school principal Tony Newman tells Fox 5 Dorman complained his chest was hurting, then collapsed. He was rushed to a local hospital but was later pronounced dead.

Dorman's friends and family gathered to remember him at a vigil Wednesday night, calling him a tough competitor in sports but a "gentle giant."

“We had planned our lives together. We were going to play football for another two years and then join the military,” one of Dorman’s best friends Chris Hartness told Fox 5. “Now that’s all gone.”

Friends told Fox 5 Dorman's father had died when he was young of a heart attack. The cause of the teen's death has not been released.

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