Pictured- Salina South Boys Soccer Coach Trey Crow

While a midweek break in the weather was a welcome respite for anyone enduring the recent heatwave, area high school athletic directors especially breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Ditto for coaches and athletes.

Temperatures hovering near triple digits for the first month of the school year not only made things uncomfortable for participants and spectators, but also produced major headaches for administrators charged with keeping everybody safe.

Salina South AD Ryan Stuart

“This is my fifth year being the athletic director, and I coached a fall sport for, gosh, 15-plus years,” said Salina South athletic director Ryan Stuart, who also a longtime tennis coach in the fall and spring. “Over my 25-year career this is easily the most consistently hot start of the school year that we’ve had.”

The prolonged high temperatures have forced al involved to be creative, not only with game and tournament start times, but also when it comes to practices. Especially after school, when for the first three weeks-plus 100-degree temperatures were the rule rather than the exception.

Veteran Salina Central athletic director Greg Maring agreed with Stuart that this has been his most challenging start to the school year in 20-plus years on the job.

Salina Central AD Greg Maring

“No doubt, it has been,” he said. “But our coaches have handled it really well. Obviously, we would like to have a set time when practices will be for parents and for kids, and then our coaches as well, who have lives outside of the coaching field.”

“So, it’s been hectic for everybody, but all in all, everybody’s been pretty flexible, and they understand. And we’re trying to do the best we can to keep our kids as safe as possible.”

Fortunately for administrators, the Kansas State High School Activities Association has safety guidelines in place for both practices and competitions. A few years ago, KSHSAA provided all member schools with wet globe bulb thermometers that measure heat stress by combining heat, humidity, wind speed, solar radiation and other conditions.

“That has been a very nice thing, because it provides us a framework to look at and try to make the best decisions you can make for the safety of everyone involved,” Stuart said. “It’s nice to have one uniform document.”

But while the wet globe thermometers dictate safety, they don’t provide solutions. Scheduling practices and games around the weather is left to the athletic directors and coaches.

“Our district guideline is that we will follow the KSHSAA guidelines for practices when it comes to those things, so it’s really pretty cut and dried for us,” Maring said. “Obviously, the bad thing is again we just don’t have a set time for practices and so forth.

“Most of our coaches have done a great job in being proactive and changing their practice times on their own to really early in the morning or late in the evening to help make things better for our parents and our kids on a set time.”

At Salina South, the boys soccer, cross country and football teams have routinely practiced before school, while other sports have waited until evening for temperatures to drop. Central also has beat the heat with both early and late training sessions.

“I remember having a few (extremely hot) days here and there, but not the length of time where we’re just stuck in this heat dome,” South soccer coach Trey Crow said earlier this week. “It has forced us to do a lot of things differently, like we practiced at 5:30 in the morning all but one practice.”

“Your choices are basically that or hope that it has cooled off enough at night. Monday, we went from 10 to 11:30, and by the time 11 came around we were taking water breaks every 10 minutes, just making sure the guys were staying up on their feet and not collapsing on us.”

Central’s football team, on the other hand, has opted for evening practices along with a couple of indoor workouts at Salina Fieldhouse. Head coach Mark Sandbo said the uncertainty has played havoc with his team’s game week routine.

Salina Central Head Football Coach Mark Sandbo

“It has been extremely challenging and draining, mentally and physically,” he said. “You just don’t know when you’re going to be able to go, and then at 2 p.m. you’ve got to make the call that hey, we’re going in the evening. We’re going in heat protocol.”

“The kids need that structure. You can definitely tell when kids are in their routine and when they aren’t.”

First-year Southeast of Saline cross country coach Luke Gleason has the added challenge of planning around his work schedule in Salina since he does not teach at the school. But that is the least of his concerns.

SE of Saline Cross Country Coach Luke Gleason

“It’s not safe for our athletes to be out in triple-digit heat, so just finding that time to get acclimated to the heat,” Gleason said. “I talked to my athletic director, Mr. (Doug) Minneman, and we thought that morning practices were going to be the best for us, not waiting until 7 o’clock at night to run, when it still could be triple digits outside.”

The Trojans finally caught a break Wednesday when the temperature dropped into the 80s and they got in a road workout. As a rural school without nearby residential streets and sidewalks, they had been limited to the cross-country course or the stadium track.

“The biggest challenge we’ve had is trying to make sure everybody’s got a practice time that works,” Maring said. “And then the other things that are coming up are adjusting game times and trying to get officials that are able to make those adjustments as well.”

As for actual competitions, most football season openers last week went off with only minor delays as kickoff times were pushed back to 7:30 or 8 p.m. But other sports completely altered their schedules.

South’s boys soccer opener against Hays took place in the morning, as did Salina Central’s first-round game Tuesday in the Salina Invitational. The first cross country meet for South, Central and Southeast of Saline at Great Bend also had an early morning start, plus shorter distances for some sub-varsity races.

Monday’s South-Central freshman and junior varsity football games were moved to the morning as well, and still the JV matchup was stopped at halftime because of the heat.

With the forecast calling for more seasonal temperatures over the next couple of weeks at least, everyone is eager for things to get back to normal.

“For parents, it has been really tough to get into a routine this fall,” Stuart said. “It wears on families, and it wears on coaches, and it wears on the staff. But you’re going to do what’s right for kids.”

Stuart, for one, can’t wait.

“I told somebody the other day, I feel like I’m the most unorganized that I’ve been in a long time, because you have something ready to go, and then the weather makes you change it again and adapt to something else,” Stuart said. “We send out these info sheets every year for every event to the opposing school, and every single one of them has been altered so far.”

There has been one exception, Stuart added with a smile.

“Volleyball has been OK because it’s an indoor sport,” he said. “It has become my new favorite sport this fall.”