BIGFORK – Under a blazing August sun, more than 40 high school football players are running sprints across a field overlooking Flathead Lake. The high noon light casts short shadows in front of each boy. It’s the second day of practice for the Bigfork High School Vikings and a nearby thermometer reads 83 degrees.
To the south, smoke obscures the distant shore of Flathead Lake, in a scene similar to the one on Aug. 13, 2007, when Jeffery Bowman, 17, collapsed following a strenuous conditioning exercise. He died a week later.
The story of a young athlete dying while playing football in August is, unfortunately, not rare. In 2011, six high school football players across the country died while practicing in extreme heat. According to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury, it was the third deadliest year since 1970.
Bowman’s death was due, in part, to an unforeseen heart condition and five years later the incident serves as a tragic reminder of what can happen when young athletes work too hard in extreme conditions. Today, coaches across the Flathead Valley say they are aware of the dangers of practicing in the heart of summer.
“I think because of the (Bowman) incident here in the valley, that every coach thinks about what can happen,” said Bigfork head football coach Todd Emslie.
Emslie has coached on and off in Bigfork since the 1990s. In 2007, he was coaching at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point and came back the following year. No one on the current coaching staff was present at Bigfork High School when Bowman died.
Emslie said he schedules most football practices in the morning to avoid the hottest hours of the day. Last week, two, two-hour practices began at 7 a.m. and 10 a.m., with an hour break between each session. Coaches also encourage players to take as many water breaks as they need.
Guidelines issued by the National Athletic Trainers Association and the American College of Sports Medicine recommend every player drink 8 to 10 ounces of water every 10 to 20 minutes, even if that person is not thirsty. The guidelines also suggest two weeks of acclimatization during the preseason, a gradual increase in the amount of equipment worn by players and the identification of unfit players who should be conditioned at a slower rate.
“Some do come in and they haven’t done a lot of training (over the summer) and so you have to keep an eye on them and the heart beat of the team,” Emslie said.
It’s the same vigilant process employed by Flathead High School head coach Russell McCarvel. He said one of the most important things for his coaching staff is to make sure they are constantly checking on players’ conditions – “the big thing is communication.” Like Emslie, McCarvel schedules most practices to avoid the hottest hours of the day. However, he says there are some advantages to practicing on a hot afternoon, including preparing players for hot, early-evening games. When Flathead’s football team does practice in the heat, McCarvel said the focus is on plays and drills and not conditioning.
When the Braves take to the field, athletic trainer Amy Thoreson is usually close by. She said early signs of heat exhaustion include excessive sweating and redness. In extreme cases, excessive sweating can lead to no perspiration at all. Thoreson has seen that extreme firsthand when she was working with Montana State University’s football team. During a practice a few years ago, a player had become delirious and confused, another sign of heat exhaustion. The player was quickly taken off the field, put in an ice bath and told to drink water as he cooled down.
“If they were allowed to keep practicing, they could have gone into shock and systems would have started shutting down,” she said.
Thoreson said an important step to avoiding situations like that is making sure each player has undergone a physical – something Bowman had not done.
“Now coaches are pretty strict about kids getting their physical before they even step on the field, and so there have been some positives that have emerged from that tragedy,” Thoreson said.
Five years later, Emslie said the tragedy of Bowman’s death remains a sensitive topic in Bigfork. He said more important than wins is the safety of each and every player.
“It’s not just about being a machine to win football games,” Emslie said. “The coaches and I enjoy being a part of these kids’ lives.”