Teams battle heat, storms while trying to practice

MEDINA – The TSSAA has regulations regarding practice in the heat for all sports, mandating no work shall be done outside if the heat index is more than 104 degrees.

There are also rules regarding storms. While football typically doesn’t have rain delays, lightning in the local area forces teams off the field for 30 minutes as long as there’s no more lightning seen in the area.

Both of those circumstances have affected local football teams this week.

“We got on the field for about an hour-and-a-half [Tuesday] and a little less than two hours [Monday],” said South Gibson head coach Scott Stidham.

Teams have different ways to combat the heat. Some get on the field early in the morning and come off before it gets too hot to work outside. The Hornets were on the field Monday at 5:30 a.m.

A lot of teams this year have decided to go later and begin work as the sun is going down and the temperature is dropping because that’s when the bulk of practice will happen during the season and also because most local school systems return to class next week, which means teachers are doing in-service work this week.

Coaches are occupied in the day preparing for the upcoming school year with the rest of the faculty.

Chester County’s coaching staff is in that situation.

“We’re in the school until 3 p.m. getting stuff done, and when we’re done, it’s too hot to get the kids out there,” said Chester County head coach Michael Hodum. “So our plan this week is to get them at the fieldhouse at 5 and get them on the field, but we haven’t been able to do that so far this week.”

The heat index dropped below 105 at 5:40, allowing the Eagles to get on the field, but a storm quickly moved into Henderson with a lot of lightning and forced the Eagles back into the fieldhouse at 6:05.

“We got 25 minutes of work on the field before we had to come back in,” Hodum said. “And we don’t have a huge fieldhouse.

“We split the guys up and had some in the team room watching film, another group in the locker room doing chalk talk and another group in the weight room lifting. None of the rooms in our fieldhouse are big enough for our entire team to meet, so our plans changed drastically.”

Because the heat index was low enough in Medina for the Hornets to go out, South Gibson got most of its work in before the storm hit about 6 p.m.

“[Assistant coach Jim Fischel] saw some lightning, and we don’t play around with it,” Stidham said. “Lightning has an undefeated record, so that’s not something we want to deal with if we can help it.”

The Hornets went into the school’s gyms for the team’s conditioning.

“It’s not what we prefer to do, but I’m glad it’s an option for us,” Stidham said. “This was a good teaching opportunity too.

“I told the guys that winning in football sometimes takes being able to change your game plan. We changed our game plan today, and we still did what we wanted to do.”

Brandon Shields, 425-9751