BIGFORK, Mt. — On a recent afternoon, it was 70 degrees on the high school football field in this northwestern Montana community less than 200 miles south of the U.S.-Canada border.
Vikings head coach Jim Benn was going through drills with his team in the pristine fall weather without much interruption. Yet just a couple of weeks earlier, players needed frequent water breaks while sweating through temperatures in the low to mid-90s, about 15 degrees warmer than the season average. year.
Although temperatures have started to drop now that fall is underway, Montana and many other states in the northern United States are getting warmer and staying warmer longer. August is when many high school sports ramp up, and this year was at or near the hottest on record for many Montana communities, according to the National Weather Service and other meteorologists. The heat wave extended into September, and at least six Montana cities broke the 100-degree mark in the first half of the month.
This August was the hottest on record in the nearby states of Idaho, Washington and Oregon. Nationally, this summer was the third hottest on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.
Health experts and researchers say states, especially northern states like Idaho, Maine, Montana and North Dakota, are not adapting fast enough to keep high school athletes safe. Students and their families have sued the schools, accusing them of not doing enough to protect the athletes. Many states that have taken action only did so after the death of an athlete.
“Between high school and college, we’re losing about six athletes each year to exertional heat stroke, and most of them are high school athletes,” said Rebecca Stearns, director of operations of the Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut, which is called. after a Minnesota Vikings player who died of heatstroke in 2001. The institute studies and tries to prevent the disease.
The actual number of heat-related deaths could be higher, he said, because death certificates are not always filled out accurately. Exertional heat illness is the second leading cause of death for high school and college athletes, behind cardiac arrest, he said.
At Bigfork, Benn said he had not seen any of his athletes experience an exertional heat illness, such as heat exhaustion or heatstroke, which can cause fainting, vomiting and even death, in his nearly 30 years of coaching career at Montana to the past. course An athlete overheated at a soccer camp earlier this summer during the record-breaking 2021 heat wave.
“We immediately put water on him, cooled him down,” he said.
The player recovered after being sprayed with a hose. Benn said he did not have a soaking tub full of ice water on hand, which is what Stearns said is the recommended treatment.
“This is exactly why we need standard policies that incorporate best medical practices,” Stearns said.
The Korey Stringer Institute ranks the 50 states and Washington, D.C., on how well they follow best practices to prevent and respond to heat-exertional illness among high school athletes, as well as other health risks such as a cardiac arrest Montana is 48th on the list, followed by Minnesota, Maine and California.
California is last, according to the institute’s report, because it is the only state that does not regulate high school athletic trainers, who are generally responsible for the health and safety of athletes. Stearns said the institute is working with California athletic officials who are pushing for laws requiring licenses for athletic trainers.
Northern states dominate the bottom third of the high school rankings. Stearns said many states the institute has approached to improve heat safety either think it’s not a problem or resist some policies because implementing them could come at a high price.
But some of the efforts don’t cost a cent, he said. At Bigfork High School, for example, Benn has implemented a three-day acclimatization period, without football pads, when his players return to the field in early August. “This is very low-hanging fruit, from my perspective,” Stearns said.
Stearns added that most heat-related illnesses occur during the first few days of training, which are usually the hottest and when athletes aren’t used to exerting themselves in the heat. But he said the state’s high school athletic association should impose acclimatization periods.
Montana and many other states also don’t have a system that dictates when to modify practices, for example by eliminating pads or reducing the length and number of practices, or canceling them altogether, Stearns said. Many northern states also do not have policies requiring an emergency plan to respond to heat-exertional illness.
Stearns and other researchers, including Bud Cooper of the University of Georgia, said states should use what’s known as “wet-globe temperature,” which takes into account air temperature, humidity and radiant heat from surfaces such as grass that absorb sunlight. to make these determinations, rather than the heat index. The heat index does not account for radiant heat, which increases the risk of developing heat illness. The National Federation of State High School Associations Foundation said in February that it was sending 5,000 special thermometers to high schools across the country.
Stearns said research suggests acclimatization periods reduce the number of exertional heat illnesses by up to 55 percent, and that states that have used wet-bulb temperatures to force changes in practice have seen a 80% reduction.
In Georgia, Cooper’s work documenting heat-related deaths among high school athletes led to sweeping policy changes in 2012. Since the policy change, Georgia has gone from being the state with the highest number of deaths heat-related among high school football players to have no deaths.
Researchers like Cooper have begun providing regional policy guidelines based on local average wet-globe temperatures to help states understand the risks to high school athletes and give them a starting point for making policy changes.
New Jersey was an early adopter of the wet-bulb system among northern US states when it passed a law in 2020 requiring school districts to purchase the thermometers. The state also requires hundreds of schools to place cold immersion tubs on site when temperatures reach a certain level. The state is now second in the ranking of high school sports safety policies, behind Florida and ahead of Georgia.
In the Pacific Northwest, Oregon and Washington have policies that require changing school sports practices based on the heat index, not the wet bulb temperature. Heat and sports safety researchers say that’s better than nothing.
The Montana High School Association, which regulates high school athletics, has implemented a heat guideline that allows referees to call extra timeouts during football or soccer games, said executive director Brian Michelotti. The association is also asking other sports, such as cross-country, to schedule meetings earlier in the day.
Although Montana health officials say the state has never documented a heat-related death among the state’s high school athletes, the historic heat waves of the past two summers have sports officials consider additional precautions. “It’s really pushed us to have more discussions about it and really go back and review with some sports science committees,” Michelotti said.
He said any policy change would have to be approved by the association’s seven-member board and would not happen until at least next year.
Heat and sports safety experts like Stearns of the Korey Stringer Institute said adding statewide policies and mandates saves lives by making sure all coaches and schools are following best practices before a death occurs .
“One life is too much of a price to pay for every game in a season,” he said.
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on health issues. Along with policy analysis and surveys, KHN is one of the three main operational programs of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization that provides information on health issues to the nation.
