Heat a potential hazard for Dukes
As temperature rises, so does the risk of injuries
It’s one thing to play a football season pandemic perverted and calendar backward, to play from winter to spring rather than summer to winter, from training in the cold and edging toward the heat rather than the other way around which everyone and his team physician prefers. It’s another thing to do that and wind up playing a national semifinal in May in the hot innards of Texas.
So while the path might seem uncluttered for a perennial stalwart such as James Madison once the giant North Dakota State got shooed from the FCS playoff bracket last weekend in a quarterfinal at Sam Houston by 24-20, well, to paraphrase a sage: Not so rapidly. If the No. 3 seed Dukes (7-0) could win in Huntsville against No. 2 seed Sam Houston (8-0), that will count as a feat no matter how steep and stout the James Madison culture has become.
“Here in Harrisonburg, we’re hitting mid-70s, low 80s, and its warm, but it’s a different type of ‘warm’ in Texas,” Bryan Schneider, the James Madison head trainer, said in a telephone interview. He spoke of the forecast temperature, which is 86, called it “a thicker heat,” said it “feels like in the 90s,” and said, “That’s a whole other ballgame,” especially as the 2021 Dukes aren’t acclimatized.
He knows all this in part because he hails from central Texas, and for football in the heat, it’s always helpful to have one of those around.
Schneider and his staff — two assistants, six student trainers, eight students who help out on the nontraining tasks — have been holding more meetings than usual with more topics than usual and more worries than usual.
“We don’t just have to worry about cramps,” he said at one point. “We have to worry about soft-tissue injury,” and he reeled off some of those with, “You’re looking at Achilles, calves, hamstrings, quads, hip flexors, groins.” He said, “I tell my student trainers all the time: Pushing fluids is more than about preventing cramps, it’s about preventing injury.”
Don’t forget preparing for heat illnesses and heat emergencies. He hasn’t (forgotten).
So in an eccentric season in a century getting ever hotter, he’s talking about “putting a good hydration method together,” with “proper supplementation before practices” and “a lot of different products we utilize.” He’s deploying phrases like “pregame IVs potentially,” and “halftime IVs potentially.” He’s talking “cold towels” in the tent on the sideline, and he’s absolutely talking electrolytes. He’s saying, “You don’t want to start in a deficit,” about “making sure we don’t go down there with half a tank or three-quarters of a tank.”
He said, “I think ideally, you train in the heat, and then you transition to cool because adapting to the heat is a lot harder than adapting to cold because with cold, I can put layers on.”
Of course, nobody has thought ideally for about 14 months now. For another detail, the coronavirus pandemic has mandated that for the three-hour flight to Houston and the one-hour bus ride from, the Dukes will not eat or drink because it’s wiser to remain masked.
Here’s another reality people seldom considered pre-pandemic: In a normal season, as temperatures get a little lower, team physicians get a little bit happier.
“You look forward to, as a team physician, (how) cramping becomes less of an issue as you go on in the season,” said Dr. Cameron Straughn, who fills that role for his alma mater.
“Honestly,” he said, “I do think it will be a little bit harder,” soon adding, “What we’re really dealing with here, we haven’t played in the heat.” To find a time the program had, he ventured back to early 2019 at FBS West Virginia (an impressive 20-13 loss) or early 2018 at FBS North Carolina State (an impressive 24-13 loss). He emphasized that the body maintenance matters through the whole week, that nutrition-wise, electrolyte-wise and all of the above, “What you’ve done Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday absolutely plays into what happens Friday, Saturday.”