Texas HS Coaches Prioritize Heat Safety Ahead of Hot August Football Practices

The Texas High School Coaches Association is prepping for hot August football practices with a new safety plan to protect players from heat illness. 

THSCA executive director Joe Martin told the Midland Reporter-Telegram the association didn’t believe it talked about heat safety enough during last year’s convention and that is why he made it a point to emphasize it this time around.

“We feel like we didn’t do enough of our coaches to prepare them, although they did a great job with it. We wanted to come back and talk about heat,” Martin said. “Our top priority at THSCA and I know at UIL is our student-athletes’ safety and that’s a reason for doing this.”

UIL athletic director Ray Zepeda said coaches have a done a good job of preparing kids for the heat. 

“Even with a very challenging situation last year, knock on wood, we were able to work through those exceedingly hot temperatures without having a catastrophic incident,” Zepeda said. “I think when you look at the size of our state and the number of athletes that are participating, it says a lot for how coaches, athletic trainers, athletic administrators take care of kids."

In addition to using Wet Globe Temperature to monitor heat, the association's medical advisory committee has come up with additional requirements for all coaches in the state. 

One requirement is that all schools have on hand a “cooling zone” or an ability to rapidly cool a student-athlete that is experiencing heat exhaustion or a heat stroke. The other is to have an action plan the includes specific steps to take in the event of a heat illness emergency. 

“We feel that the addition of those two recommendations by the medical advisory committee will allow us to continue to move forward in dealing with these extremely hot conditions,” Zepeda said.

According to the Midland-Reporter, THSCA has partnered with Ascension Seton, a health, safety and wellness sponsor based in Austin, to help provide guidance in how to manage heat safety. Schools are also given a chart based on recommendations from the American College of Sports Medicine on how to tackle the heat based on region and location. 

“One of the things that as we’re educating around tools to cool an athlete down is there are a lot of different options to cool down an athlete,” said Adam Baumann from Ascension Seton. “A lot of that will depend on budget with our schools as well. We really try to be thoughtful on what does that look like from a solution perspective -- when they know they’re going to be outside, how can we get these athletes cooled quickly, knowing you’ve got multiple programs going on, practicing at the same time, how many locations and the variety around that.”