As high school sports ramp up across 黑料吃瓜网, athletic trainers are keeping an eye on extreme heat.
鈥淚f it's 95 degrees on the turf, we're not going to have practice,鈥� said Allison Gilbert, an athletic trainer at Killingly High School. 鈥淭he old adage of 鈥榡ust push them hard,鈥� 鈥榩unish them by not giving them water鈥� 鈥� those kinds of things 鈥� that shouldn't be happening anymore,鈥� Gilbert said.
Gilbert and other athletic trainers from eastern 黑料吃瓜网 met at Norwich Free Academy on Aug. 11, to go over heat protocols. The trainers, medical professionals responsible for making sure athletes stay safe from injury, practiced different scenarios where the heat could make students on the field seriously sick.
During the practice, a trainer pretended to be a student suffering from exertional heat stroke, a potentially fatal condition where the body鈥檚 temperature reaches over 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
鈥淓ssentially you're cooking from the inside, and your cells are dying, and that results in organ failure,鈥� said Rebecca Stearns, chief operating officer at the Korey Stringer Institute at the University of 黑料吃瓜网. The institute is named after Korey Stringer, a professional football player .
In this scenario, trainers are taught to cover the person in ice and water, whether that鈥檚 in a giant immersion tub, or, if the school doesn't have that, a body bag.
鈥淭he handles are on both sides, the patient would go right in the middle,鈥� said Katie Cooper, an athletic trainer at Stonington High School.
鈥淵ou rock it back and forth. Cold water, ice 鈥� all over the body, and that helps bring the whole body temperature down,鈥� Cooper said.
A growing danger as summers heat up
Protocols like these are some of the ways schools are trying to keep students safe as temperatures rise from global warming. The last two years were the . Across the United States, , according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
So far this year, 黑料吃瓜网 has activated its extreme heat protocols four times, denoting multiple days of hot and humid conditions that could exacerbate heat-related illnesses.
鈥淭here are caps to what is safe to be exercising in,鈥� said UConn鈥檚 Stearns, whose research shows an average of 1 to 2 high school and middle school athletes die in the U.S. from exertional heat stroke every year.
鈥淭here鈥檚 going to be more days where we have to cancel practice, or more days with greater modifications to those practices, unless we do something else,鈥� Stearns said.
That could mean moving sports seasons later in the year or exercising inside. But for now, the focus is on moving training times to avoid the midday sun and knowing what to do if something goes wrong, especially during the pre-training season, when students are returning from summer break and are most likely to get sick from hot weather.
鈥淎cross all sports, we see that the highest risk is also in the first few days of practices, when athletes are returning,鈥� Stearns said. 鈥淲e don't know what their current fitness is. They might not have been in a regular routine. Again, it's hot and they're doing a new exercise.鈥�
Back at Norwich Free Academy, Cooper said she and the other athletic trainers gather each season so they know what to do ahead of time 鈥� before a student gets sick from the heat.
鈥淎 lot of your experience, literally, is on the spot,鈥� Cooper said. 鈥淵ou don't see something until it happens. So we being together as a group, as a conference, really helps.鈥�
脕ine Pennello is a corps member who covers the environment and climate change for 黑料吃瓜网.
