How a Nevada High School Football Coach Copes With Scorching Heat

Marcus Teal knows heat — the oppressive, sun-baked kind that won’t let up. Since Teal moved to Las Vegas in 1998, temperatures have hit triple digits throughout summer workouts. But the high school football coach says the air over the last few years feels different: Heat waves are more severe and longer lasting.

Teal and the varsity football team at Spring Valley High School begin preseason practice just as the desert city swelters in mid-summer. Coaches nationwide are not only grappling with the depth chart, schemes and player development, but also with keeping players safe under the sun. Extreme weather raises questions about what coaches like Teal can do to protect players as climate change makes Las Vegas — and regions worldwide — hotter. 

“We get in early and get out early,” Teal said by phone one afternoon July, when the temperature in Las Vegas was 112 degrees. “We try to limit our chances of losing somebody during a workout."

Welcome to the new world of sports, where a warming climate has heightened the significance of heat acclimation weeks, on-field ice baths, extra water coolers and fewer, shorter outdoor workouts. Teal knows players have been hospitalized while participating in football workouts, and he feels a personal responsibility to ensure none of his players ever has a heat-related illness on his watch.

Since Teal became Spring Valley’s head coach in 2010, the number of 100- and 110-degree days have spiked as climate change makes the heat longer, more intense and more frequent. Average summer temperatures in Las Vegas have risen by 5.8 degrees since 1970, according to research from Climate Central, and the planet just registered its hottest summer ever. Teal also coaches varsity softball, and even the springtime heat has become “unbearable,” when it touches 100 degrees. Until recent years, he says the mid-March softball field didn’t feel as hot as it now does. 

Come summertime, Las Vegas mornings and evenings — when many football coaches hold practice to avoid the worst of the heat — can run up to 95 degrees. But Teal has made several changes to the program this year, starting with summer workout times, which he moved from 8 a.m. to 6 a.m. He also reduced the number of summer workout days, from four to three per week, after he heard about a high school coach in Georgia who trimmed workout frequency and length due to warming weather. 

In the summer, Teal’s players finish weightlifting, conditioning and on-field drills by 9 a.m., before the temperature hits triple digits. In early July, he gave his team a week off. For the first time, his team added a tub of water and ice, basically a cold plunge, should anyone need a quick dunk during or after practice. Many football teams nationwide, Spring Valley included, must adhere to state-mandated heat acclimation periods in which players can wear only shorts, T-shirts, and helmets and run non-contact drills for the first few practices. 

The National Federation of State High School Associations also recommends a “slow progression in activity level - duration and intensity.” Nevada High School Sports safety policies specifically include heat acclimation guidelines that limit the first five practice days to no more than three hours. Pads and helmets can’t be worn until day six of practice. 

Many teams like Spring Valley practice on artificial turf fields that range from 10 degrees to 50 degrees hotter than natural grass, exacerbating the impacts of warmer weather. For years, extreme heat has baked the American Southwest, but especially scorching temperatures made July the Earth’s warmest month on record since 1880. Las Vegas wasn’t spared, underscoring why coaches need a more moderate approach to summer workouts that’s not about pushing players through the heat. 

To mitigate the heat, Spring Valley also adds water coolers and ice-cold towels on the sidelines, like many area teams. 

“The first two to three weeks of practice are where you see the highest risk of heat illness,” said Sean Langan, co-director of athlete performance at the Korey Stringer Institute, an organization housed at the University of Connecticut to prevent sudden death for athletes. Langan says it’s critical for athletes, particularly in sports like football and running, to start the season “aerobically fit” because “poor fitness is one of the biggest risk factors” to heat illness. 

“While there have been cases where coaches were negligent, heat exposure is key,” Langan says. “Get athletes to spend time outside in the heat. One reason I think people are less tolerant to heat is because they stay in air-conditioned houses all summer, then do intense activities — it’s a shock to your system.”

Growing up in California in the 1990s, Teal was a running back and safety. He knew not to dare ask for a water break during high school drills. Then he played at Idaho State University, where August workouts could be intense. “When I played, if you asked for water, you were writing your swan song,” he says. ​​

That kind of old-school, toughen-up culture has contributed to heat-related illness nationwide. In 2018, University of Maryland offensive lineman Jordan McNair collapsed during an off-season workout and died of heatstroke two weeks later. He was 19. 

Every year, high school football players die from heatstroke — researchers have estimated that around 9,000 high school athletes are treated for heat illness annually. Football players are 11 times more likely to develop heat-related illnesses than other athletes, and football exertional heat stroke (EHS) deaths per year rose from 1.4 from 2012-16 to 2.4 from 2017-21. 

That’s why organizations like the Korey Stringer Institute, named after the NFL lineman who died in August 2001 from exertional heat stroke, advise several preventive measures, including plenty of breaks, ideally in the shade, and pre-workout hydration and salt supplementation. “Don’t force players to do anything above their capacity,” Langan says. “There’s a stigma in football to toughen it out, but coaches need to let players work into it gradually.”

Teal says he’s never restricted water breaks. Need a sip of water midway through a drill? You don’t have to ask.  

“Water breaks are a given,” Teal says. “Knock on wood, we haven’t had any issues with the heat. I try to do my best so all the bases are covered and there’s adequate resources for the guys to stay semi-cool under the ball of fire that is the sun.”

Teal was kicking himself for scheduling a Sept. 1 game vs. Perry High School outside of Phoenix, where extreme heat intensified this summer. He had preferred not make his players, donned in helmets and padding, bear the Arizona heat. “I’m so mad I scheduled that game,” he said in July. The Grizzlies escaped unscathed, though, as temps cooled to the mid-80s that week. 

But the heat returned. On Sept. 8, Spring Valley dropped to 1-2 with a 20-7 loss to Desert Oasis High. The temperature at game time: 98 degrees.