Sports camps try to keep cool in steamy weather – Chicago Tribune
Plans for Girls in the Game camp in Chicago’s Douglas Park called for outdoor basketball Thursday, but with temperatures predicted near triple digits, counselors got a little creative.
They came up with a sports mash-up of beach volleyball and kickball to replace basketball. Then they tossed in a few water balloons and the day ran smoothly, said Meghan Morgan, chief operating officer of the Chicago nonprofit that uses sports to teach girls about health and leadership.
Throughout the Chicago area, sports camp counselors and football coaches were dialing back the intensity. They sought shade and productive indoor activities, and cut practice time to deal with the heat that was expected Thursday but came up a few degrees short.
Temperatures were somewhat fickle over the region but forecasts indicate that broiling heat may still materialize Friday.
“Now we’re ready to do it all over again,” Morgan said.
Besides the volleyball and kickball mash-up, Girls in the Game counselors added more time in the pool, water play and Popsicles, she said. They also negotiated with neighboring North Lawndale College Prep to use its air-conditioned indoor space Friday, Morgan said.
“We have over 100 girls,” Morgan said, “so there’s certainly been complaints about how hot it is, but we’re doing everything we can to make sure they’re comfortable. Everything is low-key today.”
And once they got in the pool, they were thrilled, Morgan said.
About 40 miles southwest in New Lenox, high school football powerhouse Providence Catholic was working through the 25 summer practices the Illinois High School Association allows. Coach Mark Coglianese said he was cutting back practices by about a half-hour. He also was allowing players to shed the full assortment of pads they normally wear this week and avoiding heavy conditioning outdoors.
The excessive heat is particularly troublesome for teams such as Providence, which practices and plays on artificial turf. Research at Brigham Young University has found that the synthetic surface temperatures can be as much as 86 degrees higher than surface temperatures on natural turf and 37 degrees hotter than asphalt.
Coglianese said he was giving more breaks, making sure the players were drinking more water and trying to find shade where he could. The team also could count on watching more game film indoors, Coglianese said.
“We just try to be smart about it,” he said. “We don’t push things and we tell kids if you’re not feeling right, by all means let one of the coaches know. We won’t count it against you. Your health is much more important.”
At Bulls/Sox Youth Academy camps throughout the region, instructors were taking the same cautious approach, said Pete Kelly, senior director of marketing for the organization. Bulls/Sox Youth Academy runs baseball and basketball camps in about 60 communities in the area from mid-June to mid-August. Nearly 3,000 kids ages 5 to 12 attend, Kelly said.
Basketball campers were unaffected because those games and drills were inside, he said. Baseball campers, whose sessions run three hours, were outdoors but had access to indoor gyms adjacent to the sites that academy organizers reserved in case of heavy rain or excessive heat, Kelly said.
If the heat got too intense for participants, he said, instructors were planning to bring the kids inside for brief periods.
Those precautions demonstrate that coaches and counselors have become much more sensitive to the dangers of excessive heat, said Tim Racki, coach of the high school football team at Nazareth Academy in LaGrange Park.
That’s a stark difference from when Racki played in high school and college in the 1980s, he said, recalling one summer practice at Southern Illinois University when, he said, he lost eight pounds in one day.
“I remember the days when water was a treat or you had to work for it,” Racki said. “If it was too hot, too bad. We’ve come a long way since then.”
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