Season 2 Ep 1 - Sporting New Temperatures with High School Athletics

As temperatures continue to rise, high school student-athletes are among the populations most vulnerable to extreme heat. In today's episode, the UCLA Heat Lab explores how heat affects athletes across multiple sports through the perspectives of athletes themselves. We discuss football and cross country, where athletes face intense outdoor heat exposure, and explore how heat can also impact indoor spaces through sports like volleyball. We even explore swimming, an unexpected but important context for understanding heat risk. As hot seasons intensify, understanding these challenges is essential to protecting the health and safety of student-athletes. 

Check out our show notes here: https://tinyurl.com/hottakesS2-E1

Transcript

Welcome And Why Heat Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Welcome to Hot Takes. I'm your host, Shimona Gupta. In this episode, we'll be exploring how heat appears in unexpected places, including the fascinating ways it impacts athletic performance and endurance.

SPEAKER_03 0:25

The Hot Takes Podcast is brought to you by the hottest lab on campus, the UCLA Heat Lab, with production support from Natalie Gertzler, Tiana Huang, Savannah Wang, Shimona Gupta, and Jaz Milan. We are generously funded by the Green Initiative Fund. You can email us at hottakesucla at gmail.com with any suggestions so we can work to improve your listening experience. Also, don't forget to give the podcast a rating on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and follow our Instagram at UCLA HeatLab. Without further ado, let's get into today's conversation about heat and sports.

Climate Change And Football Danger

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Diving into some background information, since the 1970s, the United States has been getting hotter. For reference, the temperature in the contiguous United States has risen 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit. With worsening heat as a result of climate change, one vulnerable population is athletes. Annually, approximately 9,000 high school athletes are treated for heat illness. Some of the most vulnerable athletes, however, are football players. As per the National Federation of State High School Associations, American football carries the highest risk for exertional heat illness at a rate of 4.42 per 10,000 athlete exposures, which is 11 times higher than all other sports combined. This past July, Joshua Henderson, age 16 and player on both the offensive and defensive line, passed away after complications from organ failure that was caused by heat stroke. Unfortunately, this has happened to other athletes as well. In 2017, 16-year-old Zachary Martin passed away after being in a coma for 11 days as a result of organ failure from exertional heat illness. He had a core temperature of 107 degrees. Football players are particularly vulnerable because of the nature of the sport, the clothes they wear, and even their body type. For example, athletes with more lean mass and fat mass generate and retain heat, making it harder for them to cool down, and the uniforms that football players wear, clothing and protective gear included, reduce heat dissipation from the skin. It is evident that we must have a serious conversation on how we will protect high school football players. But heat is felt across many sports, not just high contact sports. To

Cross-Country Heat And Acclimation

SPEAKER_01 2:45

explore this topic further, let's hear about some personal experiences from our heat lab team. First, we'll start with Savannah.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

When I think about heat, I immediately think about cross-country practice back in the summer. Our team would meet from 4 to 6 p.m., which is pretty much the hottest part of the day. The weather app sometimes would read over 100 degrees, and anything above 106 meant practice was canceled, but even at 103, it felt brutal. When the summer practices first began, the first few weeks were always the hardest. Our coach told us it takes about 21 days for your body to adapt to new temperature changes. Even after three weeks, the heat still felt pretty unbearable, especially on drier days, which seemed to make it even worse. It made me realize how much the human body can adapt, but also how privileged we were to choose to be out there. We could go home, rehydrate, and rest in air conditioning afterward, but not everyone has that option. For people who live or work outside, like construction workers, athletes, and people experiencing homelessness, heat isn't something you just tough out. It's a daily reality.

Indoor Heat And School Inequality

SPEAKER_00 3:56

When we think about heat in sports, we typically envision running on asphalt or grass, with the sun beating down on us. However, ambient heat can also pose dangers to athletes in indoor sports, as well as those in the water. There is a significant portion of U.S. public schools that need air conditioning, with estimates around 36,000 schools needing HVAC upgrades and over 10,000 schools that lack AC entirely. Internal temperatures in schools without air conditioning can soar quickly, creating unsafe learning environments and leaving children at higher risk of heat-related illnesses, particularly on unshaded playgrounds with asphalt or artificial turf. On a 68-degree day, asphalt can reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit. For student athletes, constant exertion, whether it is during practice or games, poses an evident risk as global temperatures continue to rise.

Volleyball In A Hot Gym

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Tiana can tell us more about her experience with playing an indoor sport in the summer without AC.

SPEAKER_03 5:01

Yeah, thanks. So I can definitely attest to this as someone who played indoor volleyball for several years back in high school. I grew up in Southern California, where if you grew up in SoCal, you know that the summer weather averages in the 80s and 90s. And because volleyball is a fall sport, trial and practice season would be right around this time in July and August during peak temperatures. This means that every summer in high school, afternoons of mine were spent in a gym with 40 to 60 other girls plus coaches for about two to three hours per day at a minimum. And these times were not just spent playing volleyball, but also doing drills, running laps, and doing strength and conditioning. I also went to a public school which was built in the 1960s, so all of our facilities were unair conditioned. And I remember that in order to mitigate this issue and try to prevent heat illness and heat stroke, the school ended up purchasing large industrial-sized fans, which were all managed by the student players before and after practice, meaning that this required high school students to maneuver these large fans in order to do our best to keep cool. And even as a 13-year-old player, this made me recognize the impacts of indoor heat on a very basic and fundamental level, as we would sometimes play in other schools' facilities during away games, specifically private schools, and the differences between playing in an AC versus non-air conditioned gym was stark. And of course, recently there's been a lot of discourse surrounding heat and regulation when it comes to indoor versus outdoor work. And obviously, oftentimes the conditions of these workers are much more severe than that of indoor high school volleyball, but this was the first time in my life that I saw how disadvantages could manifest due to the intersection of heat and class, not just in the game of volleyball and this arbitrary competition, but also when it came to players' health and their risk of getting heat illness and heat stroke.

Swimming Meets Under Harsh Sun

SPEAKER_02 6:55

Many people wouldn't normally consider swimming as an activity that would be affected by the heat, given that it's a water sport. In fact, it almost seems counterintuitive. If you're in the water, how can you suffer from the heat? Well, swimmers aren't in the water 100% of the time, and I can tell you myself that the heat was still a big issue. I consider myself lucky because my school had an indoor pool, so my team didn't have to practice in the sun. However, this was an uncommon experience, as all the other schools in my area had outdoor pools. Therefore, each time we had an away meet, we had to swim in the sun, which we were not used to at all. During a swim meet, each swimmer is expected to swim in at least two races, but some swim up to six, depending on their event. I usually swim in two to four events as a brushstroke and freestyle short distance and relay swimmer. These races are less than two minutes per event, but since we're racing, we have to exert all our energy into those two minutes. Normally this wasn't a big deal, but I remember struggling severely after my first away meet. The sun was high and shining intensely that day. The water was cool, but the cement around it was not. Each time I stepped out of that pool, I felt like I was stepping on hot coal. I can't recall if it was technically considered a hot day that day, but I do remember having a hard time going back and forth from land to water and back. By the end of the meet, I felt absolutely sick from all the temperature changes, the sunlight, and my exhaustion from the races themselves. When I got back home, I found out I had a fever and had to miss school the next day. This was probably my first experience with heat illness, and at the time I didn't even realize what it was and how dangerous it could be. Luckily, I never had another episode like this again, but I can't imagine what it's like for those who swim longer distance races in the bright sun regularly.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

So clearly, ambient heat is something to be taken seriously when it comes to athletics. This is something that we've all seen from personal experiences, but is also statistically supported as

Heat Illness Signs And Fast Cooling

SPEAKER_01 8:52

well. As temperatures continue to rise, how can we ensure that we're staying safe during sports season? Now more than ever, it's crucial to be able to recognize the signs of heat illness. Common symptoms include nausea, vomiting, fatigue, dizziness, disorientation, and loss of consciousness. Being able to notice these symptoms for yourself and those around you and advocate for breaks with water or shade can prevent greater physical stress. Oftentimes, the principle to follow in heat illness emergencies is cool first and transport second, which includes immersion in cold water or ice to lower the body's temperature and then contacting emergency services. Steps that can be taken to prevent heat illness include adequate hydration, modification of practice scheduling and uniforms while still protecting the athletes, provision of shade, fluid, cooling resources, and the increase in frequency of breaks. So, as a reminder, heat isn't constricted by location or sport. Any athlete can be vulnerable to it. As temperatures rise, make sure you're taking the necessary precautions to stay safe.

Resources Ratings And Closing

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Hey, we hope you enjoyed this episode. If you would like to learn more about rising global temperatures and how that affects athletes' vulnerability, please reference our show notes, which will be linked on our website as well as the podcast description. You can learn more about the UCLA Heat Lab on our website at heatlab.humspace.ucla.edu. Once more, we would like to send our thanks to the Green Initiative Fund for making this production possible. If you enjoyed our podcast, please feel free to give us a rating. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time on the Hot Takes Podcast.