Wading pools are helping protect overheated high school players

CLEVELAND (AP) — Some schools in Ohio are using a low-tech solution to a high-risk problem — football players overheating during hot two-a-day preseason practices.

All 14 public and private high schools in Lake County east of Cleveland have children’s plastic wading pools nearby to protect football players who might suffer heat stroke.

Hospital system Lake Health donated the shallow tubs last week as part of its new Pools for Schools program.

The idea is to fill the pools with cool water, place them in the shade and keep ice nearby in case an overheated player has to be cooled down fast.

Since 1995, 39 football players, including 29 high school players, have died from heat stroke in the United States, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Center director Dr. Frederick Mueller said the vast majority of those deaths were preventable. Research shows that ice-water baths are a good way to prevent them.

“It’s the quickest way to lower the core body temperature so they don’t reach the heat-stroke crisis level,” said Dr. Brian Juriga, Lake Health’s co-medical director of Sports Medicine.

Last month, a top researchers on heat-related illnesses called on high schools to cut back two-a-day preseason football practices the way the NCAA forced college teams to do six years ago.

Douglas Casa co-authored a study from the National Athletic Trainers Association released earlier this year. He spoke to about 250 college and high school athletic trainers at South Carolina Athletic Trainers Association in Columbia, S.C.

The NCAA adjusted its football practice guidelines in 2003 to mandate five days of single-session workouts to acclimatize to sweltering summer heat.

Casa is consulting in the lawsuit for the mother of Max Gilpin, a 15-year-old football player in Kentucky who died last August three days after collapsing at practice. The coach, David Jason Stinson, has pleaded not guilty to reckless homicide.

Cutting back practices and providing cool pools aren’t the only ideas out there for preventing heat stroke among football players.

Florida company HQ Inc. manufactures a pill that allows athletic trainers to track players’ body heat without taking their temperatures.

Players swallow a capsule, about the size of a push pin, which sends data on their internal body temperature to a hand-held monitor.

Trainers can see immediately whether a player’s temperature is reaching dangerous levels. Within 48 hours, the body passes the capsule.

The pill, CorTemp, is used by more than 30 U.S. college and professional football teams, said Susan Smith, HQ’s sales and marketing manager.

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