Students at the Willow School don’t start school until Wednesday (Aug. 13), but the school’s football team has been training at the Uptown campus for a couple of weeks. Since late July, the unrelenting heat has forced the team to split their practice in half — an hour inside and an hour outside. The players were excited for their time outdoors when Verite News visited on Aug. 1, even if it meant running drills in 96-degree heat.

Every ten minutes, the athletes gather around a trough for a five-minute break, hydrating themselves with ice-cold water. The team, like many others around the country, trains through the hottest parts of summer, when the risk of heat-related illnesses is at its highest, in preparation for the fall season.

Many of these athletes are playing in a hotter world than their coaches ever experienced. New Orleans experiences 24 more extremely hot days per year than it did in 1970, according to data from Climate Central, an environmental communications nonprofit. This summer, the National Weather Service of New Orleans/Baton Rouge has issued 31 heat advisories and 7 excessive heat warnings, when the weather is forecast to reach 103 and 105 degrees Fahrenheit, respectively. At those temperatures, the agency warns of an increased risk of heat-related illness, which can include heat cramps, heat exhaustion and exertional heatstroke.

Olabode Agaja, a pediatric sports medicine physician at Ochsner Medical Center, said the most common injuries he sees are cramps. 

“The exercise-associated muscle cramps, especially in the beginning of the season, probably in the first three to five games, you’re probably getting one to maybe three a game,” Agaja said. 

Coaches and athletic directors should monitor the wet-bulb globe temperature, a measure of heat stress that was created with physical activity in mind, said Rebecca Stearns, the COO of the University of Connecticut’s Korey Stringer Institute, which researches how to prevent sudden death in sports. The wet-bulb globe temperature has four metrics, including temperature, humidity, wind speed and solar radiation in direct sunlight, giving a better understanding of outdoor conditions than heat index, which just measures temperature and humidity. 

The Louisiana High School Athletics Association, the governing body of high school athletics in the state, has taken steps to prevent serious injuries in players, including mandated timeouts every quarter during games in August and September so athletes can properly hydrate. The LHSAA mandates that the earliest schools can start practice for any sport is July 29. Of the 25 high schools that Verite News reached out to for this story, only three responded and said they have been holding outdoor football practice with gear since Aug. 5, but one has been practicing without gear since late July.

Louisiana’s sports safety policies are among the highest-rated in the country, according to the Korey Stringer Institute. The evaluation measures how effective regulations are in preventing sudden death and catastrophic injuries within high school sports, but doesn’t take into account how or if regulations are enforced.

When the Willow School’s football coach Jewel Smith played when he was younger, the rules and attitudes surrounding breaks were harsher, he said. 

“When I played, it was like, ‘Fight through it, you don’t need any water, let’s go, be tough,’” Smith said. “You know, now it’s a little different.”

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Now, Smith builds in breaks for his players based on the weather. He gets text alerts from Earth Networks that are provided through the Willow School’s partnership with Ochsner Health. The texts inform coaches of the wet-bulb globe temperature and give them recommendations on how to keep players safe during practice. For example, on days when it is too hot, players may only be advised to be outside for one hour with 20 total minutes of breaks for hydration within that period. Coaches also receive guidance from athletic trainers, who monitor health and safety and are integral in mitigating and responding to emergencies. 

Senior Jake Guichet, a quarterback on the Willow School’s football team, said he appreciates the attention from the Willow School’s athletic training staff in making sure players take water breaks and stay healthy. 

“It looks like they’re always scanning, like looking to make sure that everybody’s okay, so yeah, it’s great,” Guichet said. Still, he said he was disappointed that his two-hour practices sometimes only allow for one hour of outside play. 

“Knowing that we are always able to go out there, but then getting told, ‘No, you have to stay in the gym first and then you can go out there and do your thing,’” he said. “I mean, it kind of sucks but it’s something that we have to deal with.”

Although drills in the gym may not be as exciting for students, they can protect young players from the weather and heightened heat levels on fields of synthetic turf, according to Penn State University’s Center for Sports Surface Research. The Willow School and other high schools use artificial turf, which the center’s studies have shown to be 20 degrees hotter than grass and can reach temperatures of up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. 

In order to avoid exposing students to the blistering heat of midday, some coaches prefer to schedule practices in the early mornings or late evenings. 

Kristin Depp, the cross-country coach at Louise S. McGehee School, said that when she started coaching, practices were always held after school. For the past three years, temperatures have been too hot to allow for afternoon practices, she said, so she holds them before school through the first week of September, or until temperatures get cooler. 

The LHSAA also recommends a heat acclimatization period, which introduces athletes back to a sport using a gradual introduction of activity for at least two weeks. The process may take longer in humid environments like Louisiana. Depp said that it is important not to hold runners who have been practicing all summer to the same standards as runners who are coming back from a weeks-long break. 

“If we’ve been seeing their face all summer long, we know where they’re at with their endurance and fitness,” Depp said. But Depp added that one of her runners who only recently returned to practice was unable to keep up as long as the rest of the team. “She’ll move up a little at a time as she gets used to running in the heat again.”

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