Michiana high schools keeping athletes cool despite the heat

ELKHART, Ind. -- With the heat advisory rolling it, Michiana high school athletics are taking extra precautions to keep their athletes safe in the sweltering heat during outdoor sports practices.

At Elkhart High School, Head Athletic Trainer, Erin Foreman, says it’s important coaches and staff are trained on the signs and symptoms of heat illness and heat stroke, and students need to communicate when they are feeling the heat.

“Usually, we start to see some cramping, muscle cramps in the calves and the abdomen, usually initially they’ll have profuse sweating, they’re sweating more than normal,” explained Foreman, “They’re getting a little tired and fatigue so they’re bending over a lot more, getting real slow, developing a headache. Just really signs of dehydration where we want to remove them from the heat back into a cold environment and start to rehydrate them,”.

According to Indiana High School Athletic Association, nearly 3/4 of student athletes begin practice already dehydrated. Co-athletic director and head volleyball coach of Elkhart High School, Jacquie Rost, explained what they teach their students to stay hydrated.

“Right away talking to our kids about hydration, super important, what not to drink, you know the energy drinks, the monster, caffeine drinks, not good. Water. Any drinks with electrolytes are super good,” said Rost.

Rost went on to say that it’s important to treat any heat situation as an emergency, whether 911 needs to be called or not.

“Got to cool that core body temperature down so we’re asking them to hydrate right away and just try to get them out of that setting that has raised up their core body temperature so and that’s, that’s immediate. That’s you know that’s not necessarily call 911 but we need to act like we’ve called 911,” said Rost.

To modify sports practices for the heat, Elkhart High School trainers take their own heat index measurements, using those readings to give recommendations to coaches on what precautions they should take.

“We do like a heat index measurement with our device that we call Kestrel, it measures kind of the air temperature, the wind speed that’s happening along with the heat relative humidity, and that gives us zones in which we make accommodations from,” said Foreman.

Foreman explained the device gives a rating ranging from green to red, and if a certain area falls into a high level, she will make recommendations such as limiting practice to an hour outside with at least 20 minutes of dedicated hydration time, allowing sports with heavy equipment like football to do practice without the equipment, and canceling or postponing outdoor games or matches when necessary, among other precautions determined for each situation.

“When our bodies stop sweating, we’re not able to cool itself off, and so then we start to experience signs of heat illness and heat stroke. Heat stroke being a 911 emergency so we want to put in these precautions to make sure that we are preventing all of that heat illness and heat stroke that we can,” said Foreman.