There’s one thing you can count on, at least usually, when high school football practice begins, as it did Monday. Mother Nature will bring the heat.
All school’s football coaching staffs have had protocols and measures in place for years about how to combat heat-related issues. Next week, the Oklahoma Secondary Schools Activities Association is expected to give some strict guidelines all high school football coaching staffs will have to do to keep their players safe when the temperatures are near the century mark — which they are forecasted to be next week during the first week of football practice.“We had a very wet and cool June on into July, then the heat turned on a little bit,” Muldrow coach Logan Coatney said. “It’s something you expect in Oklahoma. August and September are usually just as hot as it is in June and July. We’ve been preparing the kids and getting their bodies acclimated to it. We do have protocols in place and an action plan that we go over as a staff. The OSSAA does a great job every year breaking down the heat issues awareness and let us know how we’re supposed to go about it from their standpoint. They (OSSAA) gave us a lot of great tools this year (at the 2025 Oklahoma Coaches Association Coaches Clinic) to utilize. We feel very confident in making sure our emergency plan is up to date — and making sure our kids are healthy.”
“It’s a point of emphasis from the state this year,” Roland coach Greg Wise said. “That’s something here at Roland we’ve put an emphasis on ever since I’ve been here. We always measure our weather conditions with a wet-bulb globe. We have one, and we’ve used it religiously. We take precautions with it. We follow guidelines. At the (Oklahoma Coaches Association) Coaches Clinic (last week in Tulsa), they talked about that and how they’re going to have a new plan for everyone. We’ve got to all abide by the rules. Everyone has got to have the wet globe temperature reader. It’s not going to be anything new for us. We’ve always set it (wetbulb globe) before practice. We’ve had to adjust our practice schedule based on it. For us coaches, it’s not going to be anything different. I think we’ll be all right with the precautions we have in place.”
“You go through Summer Pride, but it’s different in practice,” Central coach Jeremy Thompson said. “You’re getting acclimated to the heat. We have things in place for that, and there’s going to be more things added next week according to what the OSSAA does. There will be things we have to do to make sure we’re not out in it (the heat) in certain temperatures. With the humidity, it definitely elevates that temperature to what it really feels like. We’re going to do a lot of our stuff early in the morning and late in the evening to try to make sure we go when it’s a little bit cooler. Taking care of our guys — that’s the No. 1 thing.”
“We’ll have our protocols, and we’ll have our wet bulb out,” Gans coach Gary Hixon said. “We’ll do everything the state has recommended for us. We’re working in our, I call it, dunk pool. It’s our water trough, where we’ll keep water and ice. We’ll keep that in the shade. We want to get these kids acclimated to the heat.”
