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Practices not Perfect

Sometimes, change can't come soon enough. Such was the case for two high school athletes whose lives were cut short on the practice fields.

By Paul Gable

Updated: August 6, 2009

A month after the National Athletic Trainers Association called for an end to two-a-day practices and a gradual acclimation to heat, two more high school football players are dead.

The proposed program is intended to cover the first 14 days of preseason practices; however, while signs of dehydration and heat stroke were present in one athlete, the cause of death for another was not due to the heat.

Two Athletes, Two Deaths

In Maryland, 16-year-old Edwin "Dek" Miller, who played at Northwest High School, died after showing signs of dehydration and heat stroke, according to doctors. He collapsed during an offseason conditioning session at the school.

According to acting principal Jacqueline Orrence, CPR was performed on Miller. In a published report, first-year head coach Mark Maradei said he rushed to Miller "as soon as he heard" the teen collapsed.

An autopsy was requested by the family and was completed, however, the details were not known immediately.

Recently, another Kentucky high school was dealt a blow as Fort Campbell High School's Tim Williams, a 16 year old rising junior, died following a practice last month.

According to head coach Shawn Berner, Williams became "lethargic" after a morning practice and was then hospitalized with an unspecified condition.

Heat-related causes had all but been eliminated Wednesday before Williams died at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt University.

On the day Williams became lethargic, temperatures were in the mid-70's and there was rain, according to reports.

Cindy Gibson, a spokesperson for the Department of Defense Education Activity, a body that oversees schools on military installations, said heat was not a factor.

After two more deaths, football coaches, players and administrators find themselves asking what can be done to help put an end to tragic deaths.

Since 1995, there have been 39 deaths from heat-related injuries, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research.

Study underway in Georgia

Kinesiology researchers at the University of Georgia will launch a study of 2,500 football players at 25 high schools across the Peach State this month with the hope of finding scientific data to help save lives.

The Georgia High Schools Association has mandated that all schools must develop a written policy for extreme weather conditions to determine whether or not practices should be held or modified.

Mike Ferrara, a professor of kinesiology and director of the athletic training education program in UGA's College of Education, said there is limited scientific data has made it tough to know what the risk is when practicing in extreme environmental conditions.

Ferrara and Bud Cooper, a co-investigator on the study, will measure WBGT.a measure of humidity, integrated effects of radiation and wind, and ambient air temperature combined into a formula to give a WBGT reading, which allows investigators to measure environmental conditions. Cooper and Ferrara will look for any correlation between the figures and the rate of exertional heat illnesses to determine risk levels.

"We'll be measuring the number of heat cramps, heat syncope (fainting), heat exhaustions and heat stroke cases in Georgia and compare those to the WBGT," said Ferrara in a published report issued by UGA. "For instance, in the four-year NCAA study that we just completed, we found that the risk of EHIs increases five-fold when the WBGT was 82 degrees or greater.

Ferrara said the EHI risk was 2.5 times greater in the Southeast than any other region.

In addition to the study by UGA, the NAAT has come up with a proposal that would affect the first 14 days of the preseason.

The major keys of the proposal are as follows:

On days 1 through 5, players can participate in only one daily practice.

During the first two days of regular practice, a helmet is the only protective equipment permitted.

On days 3 through 5, helmets and shoulder pads only should be worn.

Beginning no earlier than day 6 through day 14, double practice days must be followed by a single practice day.

Could a pill be the answer?

Several years ago, news broke of a pill that can monitor the body's internal temperature, and in the wake of recent deaths, there is a push for high schools to implement use of the pill.

The idea of the pill originated from NASA, who joined forces with Johns Hopkins University to develop an ingestible "thermometer pill" called the Ingestible Thermal Monitoring System.

The three-fourths-of-an-inch pill consisted of a silicone coating on the exterior and a telemetry system, a microbattery and a quartz crystal temperature sensor on the interior.

Once ingested and inside the gastrointestinal tract, the quartz crystal sensor vibrates at a frequency relative to the body's temperature, producing magnetic flux and transmitting a harmless, low-frequency signal through the body. This signal can then be retrieved by a recorder, outside of the body, that displays the core body temperature reading with an accuracy to within one-tenth of a degree Celsius.

Following the deaths of University of Florida fullback Eraste Autin and Minnesota Vikings standout Korey Stringer in 2001, the Ingestible Core Body Thermometer Pill was developed.

Within one to two hours of ingesting, the pill can reveal vital information necessary for prevention and treatment of heat related illnesses.

The pills, which are numerically coded and patented by the US Food and Drug Administration, allow athletic trainers to enter a jersey number on a keypad and know what an athlete's core temperature is immediately.

The University of South Florida, University of Florida, University of Oklahoma, West Chester University, the Minnesota Vikings, Philadelphia Eagles and Jacksonville Jaguars have all used the pill to monitor their players.