By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
Eastern Alamance’s boys’ soccer team was among the first to start practice, doing so Wednesday prior to the fog lifting in some parts of Alamance County.
A few hours later, Southeast Alamance principal Eric Yarbrough walked off the football practice field after checking in on that team.
“Summer’s over,” Yarbrough said.
That was the tone throughout the state with the first day of official practices for fall sports teams in the North Carolina High School Athletic Association.
Football teams in the county had various schedules for Wednesday’s workouts. Some teams gathered for 8:00 a.m. sessions. Others weren’t intending to go onto fields until 7:00 p.m.
Teams in other sports also had varied schedules – four Southeast teams had evening sessions planned, for instance.
But Eastern’s soccer team was up early for the 6:45 a.m. workout on the artificial turf fields at Mebane Community Park.
“Dense (fog) and the air was still kind of thick,” Eastern athletics director Brad Costa said. “But it was cool.”
That, of course, didn’t last long with rising temperatures and heat advisories all week throughout the region.
So sweat was pouring off athletes, coaches, and anyone else who might have been interested enough to stop by for a look.
“The heat is something we definitely battle against,” said Treygan Lucas, a senior linebacker for Southeast’s football team. “You got to keep pushing. It doesn’t matter – hail, snow, excruciating heat.”
Eastern senior football player Isaiah Hairston, a linebacker, said he doesn’t allow the conditions to be a distraction.
“Not to me,” he said. “You adapt over time. Heat ain’t nothing.”
Schools in the county use Wet Bulb Glove Temperature devices to monitor conditions. That provides guidelines on the length of workouts and if conditions have become too dangerous for practices to continue.
“The heat is a different thing,” Southeast junior tight end/defensive end Drew Easter said. “We just got to make sure our bodies are conditioned, drink lots and lots of water. That’s one thing that I think our team really struggles with is drinking water, but they’ll learn to pick it up.”
The National Federation of State High School Associations says that extra vigilance should be in place during the first few days of practice because that’s a period when athletes are most vulnerable to heat as they make transitions into another phase of training.
“We just beat the heat,” Eastern football coach John Kirby said after the team left the field following a morning session.
Eastern had 73 players at its football practice. Southeast counted 80.
“Eighty is perfect,” coach Tony Aguilar said, though he was prepared for several more.
Fall sports are contested outdoors with the exception of volleyball.
At Southeast, even the marching band was practicing in front of the school in the morning.
First competitions for sports other than football can begin August 11. The first slate of football games comes August 22.
This week, the NCHSA’s board of directors gave approval to the organization’s staff to adjust schedules of championship events as necessary to accommodate the new eight-classification set-up, which expanded from four classes. Because of the need for additional venues, it’s possible that some state championships might have to be contested on days other than Fridays and Saturdays in certain sports.
