WACO, Texas (KXXV) — Earlier in July, the Texas High School Coaches Association spoke with Central Texas coaches to discuss upcoming changes — the biggest priority of the conference was the heat.
Along with recommendations from last year, two more have been added.
"One is there is a requirement this year that all schools have on hand, what we would call a cooling zone or an ability to rapidly cool student athletes that are experiencing heat exhaustion or heat stroke," said UIL Athletic Director, Ray Zepeda.
"Second recommendation that it came forth this year is that emergency action plans actually has to contain specific actions that you're going to take to address a heat emergency."
Covering this event, the heat emergency recommendations caught my eye, so to find out just how hot it gets in Central Texas, 25 News sat down with Chief Meteorologist Matt Hines, who has been part of the community for nearly 20 years.
"At the beginning of Texas high school football, you are going to be hot — there's a huge difference between, let's say you're on a natural surface of grass and turf grass —it can be 90 degrees outside and so it'll feel like 98, 99, 100 degrees on the surface, then you get onto a turf field, you could feel 50, 60, 70 degrees hotter than that," Hines said.
These recommendations by the THSCA aren't mandates, but local athletes are also taking steps to be safer when they step on the field.
"Well, for the players know your body if you know, you don't feel right, if you know you're starting to feel hot, ask the coach to take a cooling break that is up to the coach and everything," Hines said.
"If you're starting to see those signs, make sure you get them into a safe place quickly because again, heat, it can happen so fast."
"I think what's important for us is that we continue to have feedback from coaches and partners and athletic trainers and partners like this and in this space to try to continue to look at our recommendations and possibly at some point, it would be a mandate — we're just not quite there yet. We wanna see how this summer goes," Zepeda said.
Hopefully these recommendations will go into effect for the upcoming season.
25 News will provide updates during our high school football show, Red Zone.
