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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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KINGSLAND, Ga. – Lightning strikes above the live oaks lining the practice field in this coastal town in southeast Georgia. Coach Jeff Herron blows his whistle three times, giving the evacuation orders. A cheer of "Hey!" erupts from the 160 football players as they happily hustle off the field and into the gym.
Coach Herron doesn't share their enthusiasm. A lost practice puts his Camden County High School Wildcats – three-time state champions, in '03, '08, and '09 – even further behind schedule. On Aug. 1, the team was forced to scale back its first full-contact practice due to this year's new statewide heat rules.
"It was on the border," Coach Herron said of that day's weather reading, a complex formula of temperature, humidity and radiant heat. "We were planning on coming out in full pads, but we couldn't do it."
Scaling back the intensity of a football practice due to hot weather was once laughable in South Georgia, where heat, gnats and hard-hitting high school football are facts of life. But this year Georgia became the latest state to enact new rules to prevent heat-related deaths of high school football players, a category in which the state leads the nation.
"The climate's getting warmer so players are exposed to higher temperatures," said Andrew Grundstein, a climatologist at the University of Georgia and a co-author of a 2012 study of heat related deaths in high schools nationwide. Across the country, deaths of high school football players due to heat nearly tripled from 1994 to 2009 compared to the previous 15 years, according to Grundstein's study. Heat illnesses in football players have multiple causes, experts say, but as the climate heats up, practices in Georgia – and around the country – are getting watered down just to be safe.
Lose its punch
Some grumble that South Georgia's trademark football might lose its punch. South Georgia teams have won six of the past nine state championships in Georgia's highest classification. This part of the state is home to the Valdosta Wildcats, the winningest high school football team in the nation, with 869 wins, 23 state and six national championships. Camden County has lost just 15 games in Coach Herron's 13 seasons. This year they join Valdosta in the high school version of college's Southeastern Conference, a region famous for its bruising football and rabid fans.
As Camden's Aug. 25 kickoff in the Georgia Dome nears, the players say that despite a new summer routine – which meant skipping their right-of-passage summer camp – they'll be ready for the season. Coaches, players and parents say that the new heat rules are good, but they'll take some getting used to.
"Certainly it's a step in the right direction. Nobody wants to lose a kid," Herron said.
From 1980 to 2009, 58 high school football players across the nation died from heat-related illnesses, mostly in the month of August, with more than half succumbing during the morning practices when the high humidity can make conditions most oppressive, according to Grundstein and colleagues' study, published in the International Journal of Biometeorology. On average, nearly three players died each year between 1994 and 2009, up from an average of one per year over the previous 15 years. Six players died in Georgia during the study period. Two more have died since.
From 2005 to 2009, there were 18 exertional heat stroke deaths among football players nationwide, with all but one at the high school level. That's the most in any five-year block over the past 35 years, and twice the five-year average, according to the University of Connecticut's Korey Stringer Institute, which studies heat stress in sport and is named after the Minnesota Vikings offensive lineman who died from exertional heat stroke in 2001.
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16 Comments
Add Comment"Some grumble that South Georgia's trademark football might lose its punch", much better to send a couple kids to the lord than lose a game. If Jesus needs a blood sacrific to ensure a winning season then who are we to disagree?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTexas football has always been hot...SciAm is nuts...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGod I hope so! Finally a good side effect of climate change. I say get rid of the college and professional crap too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe they should do a study to see if being spoiled with A/C can make you more susceptible to stroke.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes the military suffer from any of these same problems when they send their 'maggots' out on drills?
By the way, a 95 degree day will still be 95 degrees even with climate change; so, how can it make it worse? They've already got advisories not to play when the temperature exceeds a certain degree.
No need to use pejoratives; you're making the article writer look better and without contributing anything substantial to the topic. Why not point out what makes it unintelligent?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPosting rational comments dissecting the vapidity of ignorant illogical articles is unnecessary.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm with pokerplayer on this one.
I think that they need to ban lattes and triple shot americanos also. The coffee growers are deforesting the jungle and this is creating mad-made climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso outlaw bio-fuels as it is causing starvation.
And outlaw windmills as they kill birds.
What say you?
Rude foolish comments does nothing to help solve a very serious problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat DO we really do about the climate getting so hot?
There's no easy fix.
Use solar to clean more water.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClean water is subsidized MORE than gasoline. and it's cost a lot more per gallon!!!
We have created life styles that will not be sustained in the future...look at all impulsive advertising, it's not just grandiose, it's foolish nonsense.
Marketing has stuped to a false of feeling good to sell wasteful junk that should not have been make in the first place..
How many people live like that, no one I know?
Let's think about reality.
Find ways to enjoy life with less pollution.
There's a thousand things going unreported in physics, chemistry, astronomy, etc. and we get another 'fluff' article from 'Unscientific American'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCurious...if temperatures are not as hot next summer will it be cooling? No...it will dismissed as 'weather'.
By the way...summer in Western Canada is slightly below average temperature. Global warming is not based on a season in the USA in an region that is less than 1% of the world's surfac,
The title should be "New Rule Restricts Football Practice".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr ... "Hot Weather In Southern Georgia In August? Who Woulda Thunk It?
Dump the helmets, dump the pads, and stop scrambling brains. And since high school football is merely a sport, and not a war, don't risk lives by practicing in the heat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis change has nothing to do with climate change but a change in the understanding of health w.r.t workouts in the heat. Basically competitiveness has risen between sports programs over the past 40 years and the result has been tougher and longer training sessions for athletes. This then resulted in deaths which made people (and then coaches) finally realize that it was a bad idea to overdue it in the heat. A shocking revelation... don't ride a horse to hard or it will die.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot everything is about climate change and dubious connections doesn't help the argument.
I wasn't going to post a comment. But this article is absurd.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI thought Scientific Anerican was supposed to be about Science. Real, honest to goodness, objective, factually based science. Years ago I actually respected this magazine.
What's happened to my Scientific American? Has it been taken over by an escaped gang of renegade elves from the North Pole?
Look at:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/time-series/index.php?parameter=tmp&month=8&year=2011&filter=1&state=9&div=0
Is the issue really temperature? Perhaps we are just getting less acclimated to heat and/or more aware of the dangers.
This article doesn't belong in a scientific journal. Maybe a political journal or a comic book.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this