Heat-r
elated illnesses including heat cramps, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke, are a constant concern for high school athletic programs beginning late in the summer. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a study reminding adults that football players, especially the big guys, are at much higher risk of heat-related illness than athletes in other sports.
The report, published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, found more than 9,000 heat-related illnesses occur among high school athletes each year, nationwide. Those figures may be an underestimate because the survey only recorded incidents that resulted in more than one day of illness, and only nine high school sports were assessed.
The majority of such illnesses (70.7 percent) occur among football players, according to researchers who analyzed 2005-09 data from the National High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study.
About two-thirds of heat-related illnesses occur during August and most happen during practices, not games. Overweight athletes are most likely to be affected.
Thirty-one high school football players have died from heat stroke since 1995, the report states, citing data from the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research. However, no heat illness-related deaths were reported by any of the schools in the study.
