Practices held in a barn. Cross-country runs at 5:30 a.m. Ice baths on the sidelines.
In Texas, high school sports teams and marching bands are shuffling schedules and shortening practices as one of the state’s hottest Augusts on record coincides with the start of the school year.
This month, new rules went into effect that require coaches and band directors to closely monitor the wet bulb globe temperature, a metric designed to measure heat stress on the human body by incorporating factors like humidity, the angle of the sun and wind speed. Across most of the state, wet bulb globe temperatures above 82 degrees Fahrenheit, or roughly 28 Celsius, now trigger a series of escalating requirements designed to protect student athletes.
About 9,000 high school athletes get treatment for heat-related illnesses each year in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and an estimated 159 student football players have died of exertional heat stroke since 1955.
To prevent heat-related illnesses in athletes, coaches should increase rest breaks, ramp up the intensity of practice gradually at the start of the season, and make sure players are hydrated, said Douglas Casa, professor and chief executive of the Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut, which focuses on preventing severe injuries and sudden deaths among athletes, military personnel and laborers.
But there’s only so much a coach can do in August’s increasingly unrelenting heat.
“I predict high school football will be a spring sport in 20 years because of global warming,” Dr. Casa said.
Georgia was among the first states to adopt new rules in 2010, followed by several others in the Southeast. Many of the policies require acclimatization periods at the start of the school year and temperature monitoring systems.
The heat rules in Texas were developed by a committee of physicians and sports medicine experts for the University Interscholastic League, an organization that oversees athletics in the state’s public schools.
“While it may require some adjustment to practices and increased flexibility, there is a shared understanding that the health and safety of all participants come first,” said Julia Zachary, a spokeswoman for the organization.
Schools are now required to cancel outdoor practices if the wet-bulb temperature exceeds 92 degrees Fahrenheit. Above 90 Fahrenheit, practice time is capped at an hour, and football players must take off all protective gear. At lower temperatures, frequent water breaks and the presence of a “rapid cooling zone,” like an ice bath, are required.
The Bryan Independent School District in the eastern part of the state began following the new guidelines in 2023, before they became mandatory.
“It was definitely a shocker” at first, said Joshua Woodall, assistant director of athletics in the district. Many teams in the region moved from afternoon practice to 6:30 a.m. start times, and “making that modification was difficult,” he said.
Several schools in the region are now building open-air pavilions and setting up fans to help with shade and air circulation, Woodall added.
In a survey conducted by the Houston Chronicle, almost 80 percent of Texas coaches said they thought the new guidelines were too restrictive. Some have worried the measures will disrupt practices in some parts of the state more than others, shortening workouts more frequently in humid regions and putting schools without indoor training facilities at a competitive disadvantage.
Yet the same survey found evidence the rules are already changing teams’ behavior: more than 80 percent of coaches said they have significantly changed the way they run practices.
“We know how to prevent heat stroke from happening,” Dr. Casa said. “And if it does present, we have a foolproof solution, 100 percent survivability.”
A catastrophe in the Himalayas
Scientists aren’t yet sure exactly what caused the deadly landslide and flash floods in Nepal and Tibet this week, but they have a suspect: Climate change is essentially melting the glue that holds the Himalayas together.
For thousands of years, permafrost, a frozen mix of soil and rock, has kept mountainsides stable. But as temperatures rise, permafrost is thawing, potentially making whole slopes shaky and setting off more frequent collapses that pulverize ice into water and mud. — Maxine Joselow and Leo Sands
