Football: Beating The Elements

Football is a game that is made of many physical challenges.

Feats of strength executed by those on the gridiron will make a difference between a sack and a touchdown. Hands, hips and feet twist and twirl around in and effort to subdue the opposing team.

Like a car's parts underneath the hood, many pieces all work together to make sure all is running smoothly.

However, on an afternoon where the sun shined bright and temperatures reached the triple digits, the individual parts of the vehicle that is the football team could break down at any given moment.

This is where the cooling system comes into play.

In practice, each player knows the schematics of what's being run, as well as what's run against them. However, the chances of knowing what to expect on the gridiron makes the game situations tougher. All of the thought processes being bottled up within a helmet can produce a bit of wear in the mind.

Temperatures ran high during the first week of the high school football season. As the sunlight sped its way down to the Earth at 5:15 p.m. on this Friday afternoon at Sterling High School, the sophomore Braves were about to do battle with Metamora's underclassmen.

With a game-day air temperature of 98 degrees as a high, the gridirons at Fulton, Rock Falls and Sterling tied for the hottest home games in northern Illinois. Sterling felt hotter, however.

Crisp Countdown

Two years ago, the playing field at Sterling's Roscoe Eades Stadium was considered to be in bad shape due to heavy rains and extra use over the years. Through fund raising and donations, field turf was installed in time for the 2012 season. This prevented the use of needing to water down the field and cause more harm to the playing surface.

Spraying was needed once more at the newly-named Sterling Chevrolet Field. Realizing the intense conditions of the opening football game of the 2013 season, Sterling High School called upon the city's fire department to hose down the football field at 2 p.m.

Playing on field turf increases the temperature by about 10 degrees from the air temperature. Still, after the fire department did its job, the mercury read a stifling 115 degrees on the turf along the Sterling sideline at 4:15.

About a couple of hours before kickoff, Sterling senior lineman Blake Hall and his varsity friends stood at the mouth of the stadium's tunnel talking about the heat, among other things.

They had been through it before and wouldn't let it bother them later in the night.

“We've been practicing on it for a long time,” Hall said. “We should be alright.”

At the steel table on the Metamora sideline were six water cooler jugs – three on top and three underneath. Sterling had just a single cooler on its table. However, modern technology controlled the cooling process for the Sterling sideline: A three-foot-high plastic piping cube pushes out water from several holes along the top to create a multi-fountain device. This is Sterling's newest hydration technique, having come in favor of the dolly-like water bucket, which uses a motor to spit out water from several handle-like fountains. This machine has been in the Sterling arsenal for the past couple of years, after an older system had numerous battery problems.

All resources were put to use on this oven of an evening.

Sterling athletic director Greg King chatted with the group of varsity players in the tunnel; kids whom he had been in charge of in the football program until a couple of years ago. Having turned over the head coaching reigns to Jonathan Schlemmer, King's duty on this particular evening of preparing the stadium for the game becomes more abundant.

After recollecting about a hot evening in Edwardsville many years ago while serving as a Rock Island assistant coach, King called on a couple of varsity players to bring over a large fan from the school's Fieldhouse to the Sterling sideline.

Metamora's fan had already been placed on their sideline.

“One of the first things you got to do is you have to make sure your kids are smart throughout the day and get a lot of water throughout the day,” King said. “You want the kids to play, and they've worked so hard, but at the same time you want to make sure it's smart.”

King served on a committee with the IHSA to look at the heat-related changes in off-season and preseason practices. The IHSA made substantial changes to the first couple of weeks of practice this year to limit excessive heat exposure.

“Listening to the doctors from the Korey Stringer Institute, it's some pretty serious stuff,” King recalled. “You want the kids to have fun, but be safe at the same time.”

Several Metamora players went through pre-game warmups shirtless, minus the black-colored pads and the black-colored helmets.

“When we got here today, we went a little less with shoulder pads and helmets,” Metamora team doctor Timothy Kaufman said. “We emphasized a lot with water every time they come out, and lots of ice bags on their neck to keep them cool.”


Sweltering Sidelines

The increased awareness on this scorching evening also increases the concentration for Sterling athletic trainer Andi Sumerfelt.

“I have the ice baths in case of any heat illness,” Sumerfelt said. “The best way to recover is to cool their body temperature down with cold water immersion. So I make sure I have the tank ready for that. We have fans on both sides. I have Gatorade for both teams, as well as plenty of water.”

In addition to focusing on injuries and soreness to the football players, coordinating a hydration routine was a big part of Sumerfelt's afternoon. Water was not only being provided for hydration in the bodies, but also being provided for the surface of the bodies. She set up a pair of stations along the sideline where players would be soaked with water. At each station, one of her assistants would soak a large yellow sponge into a water jug and ring it out over the top of a player's head.

“It has ammonia spirits in them and it helps open the pores so they can breathe better, as well as cool them down because it's ice and water together,” Sumerfelt said.

Her other assistants, a select group of kids from Sterling's junior tackle program, were in charge of the green Gatorade bottles that were placed in the orange racks. The kids had to be alert for timeouts, stoppages in the game, and for certain players coming on from the field.

This being the season's first game, Sumerfelt taught the kids on how and when to deliver the water to the sophomore players. Eventually, one of the water boys had to be helped to the cooling station at halftime.

Breaks became few, as Sumerfelt describes such a night as having one thing happen after another before finding a break at the half.

“When it's hot like this, I always make make sure – any time of the day, whether it's practice or a game – I have an ice bath ready and ...”

Things were cut off all of a sudden when Sumerfelt received a motion from the Metamora sideline about someone with an asthma attack. As she raced across the field, a stretcher from the CGH ambulance also flew by. After a few minutes, all help needed was completed.

“The coaches made sure that they drank plenty of water throughout the day, as well as sodium,” Sumerfelt said. “It is depleted in the sweat, so they made sure they got a little extra sodium today to help prevent any cramps.”

And if there's not enough sodium, help can be found in a pickle jar.

“Pickle juice is very high in sodium,” Sumerfelt added. “We have one guy that cramps all of the time and he brings his own pickle juice and drinks it. It really helps prevent them because of the sodium that's in it.”

The water boys served not only the sophomore players, but also to the game officials.

“Hey, get some for the officials, guys!” King asked a couple of the kids from an open area on the sideline during a a timeout.

Veteran area referee Don Cook's squad was working both the sophomore and varsity contests. This particular sophomore game featured officials' time outs during changes in possession and longer quarter breaks. The lengths of the quarters were shortened on this evening from ten minutes each to eight.

“Tonight there's all kinds of water,” King said. “We got some fans here. We're going to shorten the sophomore game by quarters from ten minutes to eight minutes with a lot of water breaks in between.”

Fighting the heat and each other, the Redbird sophomores scored the game's first touchdown against the Braves on its opening drive. The Redbirds would cruise to a 21-8 halftime lead under the calling of quarterback Jacob Mitchell.

Also a member of the varsity roster, Mitchell was only scheduled to play the opening half. With his sophomore game done, Mitchell made his way to the bench where he relaxed with his pads off, with an ice bag wrapped in a towel hanging over his neck.

“You just got to keep your head up and stay focused to block out the heat as best as possible,” Mitchell said. “It's not a big factor once you're playing. You don't really think about it too much. You just got to block it off and stay hydrated all week. That's what everyone did. Our coaches told us to stay hydrated and we did.”

Mitchell was examined in this process by Dr. Kaufman. The evening was a busy one for him in between keeping the Redbirds hydrated and coordinating the efforts by the team's two water boys in freshman uniforms.

Metamora's cooling setup involved plastic cups of water placed on wood trays with holes in them, with the water boys carrying them out waist-high whenever time was called.

“We really emphasized hydrating the whole week,” Kaufman said. “You can't hydrate just today, you got to hydrate three or four days prior. So we really talked about having good meals, good rest, and to hydrate this week. That's the key thing.”

Just don't take in too much water at the wrong time, as was the case for Mitchell.

“He drank a little too much water there in the end and felt like he was going to throw up for a few minutes,” Kaufman said.


More Than Enough Water

Metamora's sophomore team would put the Braves at 0-1 with a 28-14 win. The elements improved as the game came to a close with large clouds looming over the stadium.

“Thankfully the clouds came out and cooled it off pretty quick to help,” Kaufman said.

Halfway through the first quarter of a scoreless varsity game, the hot weather had finally transitioned into one with a large draft of cool air. As the quarter drew to a close, the drafts became more prevalent. That meant the arrival of the second weather-related concern for the evening: a thunderstorm.

Small droplets of rain spat every few seconds during the four-minute mark of the first quarter. After that, the drops got larger and eventually cascaded over the turf in round, shiny chunks reflected by the lighting system.

Touchdowns by Sterling's Draque Peneflor-Heier and Metatmora's Zach Rohrback made for a 7-7 game that lasted until the 8:32 mark of the second quarter.

Lightning had been spotted from the stadium at 8:10 p.m. to enact a 30-minute postponement.

The postponement lasted longer than 30 minutes.

And it's ongoing.

On an evening when water was badly needed for the football players, the water ended up winning. No major heat-related incidents were reported from Sterling's sideline, and other than the asthma attack on the Metamora sideline, no other heat-related incidents were reported there.

The water ended up winning in the varsity game also, to the point where the game couldn't be resumed at any point during the night and had to be pushed back to 7 p.m. the next evening. Too much lightning scattered the sky to cause scheduling crunches for Metamora, whose caravan drove about 75 miles to get to Sterling.

Crunches were also made to the stadium schedule for Saturday. Roscoe Eades Stadium's other tenant, the Newman Comets, were scheduled to have a 7 p.m. varsity kickoff against Rockridge. Since the stadium's main tenant had no choice but to reserve its priority, this put Sterling's two high school athletic directors on the phone with each other.

King, Newman athletic director and football coach Mike Papoccia, and the administration from Rockridge worked out a deal where Newman's varsity kickoff would take place at 3 p.m.

So ended a rough evening for both varsity programs, whose game now has this gaping interruption. So ended a rough evening for Sterling's sophomores, given a season-opening loss to think about before suiting up once more to take on Mendota next Saturday. So ended a rough evening for Metamora's sophomores also, whose bus broke down in the heat not too far from Sterling.

The heat was a factor in having King giving out a freshman-level rarity: an air-conditioned charter bus to be used for the drive to Metamora this morning for a 10 a.m. kickoff, where the sun will shine directly over Malone Field.

“I told my son, who's a freshman, to take a water bottle with him for all his classes,” King said.