RUSTON, Louisiane —
With on-field temperatures sometimes topping 150 degrees, 10-year-old baseball player Emmitt Anderson and his Alabama teammates thought best to kneel when they gathered near the mound for pre-emption prayers. game at a recent regional youth baseball tournament here.
“It was too hot on our knees,” Anderson said of the artificial surface. “We just got up. »
The high heat proved to be considerably more difficult to handle than the fastballs in the DYB World Series strike zone this week. Temperatures reached 105 degrees, with the heat index peaking at 117.
Some spectators and referees had to be treated for heat-related symptoms. A few passed out and were briefly hospitalized.
“The heat was so extreme, I just knew it was a matter of time before something happened,” said Dr Kelsey Steensland, an anesthesiologist from Dothan, Alabama, who was there to watch her 10-year-old son year-old Finn, playing for a team representing their state.
During the opening ceremonies, she rushed to help an elderly woman who had collapsed and had not regained consciousness for several minutes.
“It was a medical emergency,” Steensland said. “It was more than giving someone a glass of water. »
With climate change pushing average global temperatures up, organizers, players and spectators attending quintessentially American traditions such as midsummer youth baseball championships need to pay closer attention to the heat. – and become more resourceful to mitigate its effects.
A typical example is the DYB World Series, which features teams from 11 Southern states competing in multiple age groups up to 12 years old. Formerly known as Dixie Youth Baseball, DYB was established in 1955.
“The number one priority of any event that anyone organizes outdoors is the safety and health of attendees,” said DYB Commissioner William Wade. “We must do our best to preach safety as we can. »
Large evaporative coolers – which pull air over the water to cool it before pushing it back – were placed in dugout canoes. This was the first time BJ Branigan, who coached a team in the New Orleans area, had seen this.
During the first four days of the six-day tournament, when temperatures were at their hottest, matches were halted every two innings for five-minute “heat breaks”. Boxes of water were provided for coaches, players and referees.
Many also wore wet cooling towels on the back of their necks.
Sailcloths over the stands helped keep fans out of direct sunlight at the Ruston Sports Complex – a newly built facility that has garnered high praise from tournament attendees and fans alike. attendees. But some have expressed concern about how the artificial turf fields, ‘filled’ with black rubber granules for cushioning, sometimes get so hot that you can easily see the air rippling by convection just above from the surface.
“One day they informed us that the temperature was 167 on the ground – and it was like that,” said referee Tim Ward, noting that it had never been so hot in 25 years to call. bullets and kicks. “You couldn’t stay still. You had to keep moving or your shoes would start to get soft and the heat would creep up on you.
Ward was behind home plate that day, wearing a mask and chest protector, and passed out between innings.
When he regained consciousness, he was being treated in the canoe and was taken to hospital shortly afterwards by ambulance. He missed a day of matches and became a referee again before the end of the tournament.
Any proposal to cancel or postpone the tournament would have met with considerable opposition. Back to school was approaching for some players, and these were their most important games of the season. Parents and grandparents had booked hotels and traveled from as far away as Virginia.
Spectators tried to adapt on the fly.
Many showed up with hand-pulled wagons to move newly purchased lithium-ion battery-powered misting fans to seating areas, where they were attached to buckets of water.
“I have never experienced such heat before. You can feel your eyes go dry,” said Steensland, who watched games with a fan misting pointed at her and her 7-month-old daughter.
“Either you’re prepared or you’re not,” she said. “And people who come prepared have a cart full of hundreds of dollars worth of equipment – chairs, fans, tents. You must have industrial grade fans to withstand temperatures like this.
Experts say heat exhaustion and heatstroke will likely become more common in the coming decades. Signs of heat illness include profuse sweating, dizziness, muscle spasms, nausea, and loss of consciousness. Cardiovascular collapse is one of the most common causes of death from extreme heat, due to the extra energy the heart expends to help the body respond.
During the opening ceremonies, the guest speaker was Louisiana Tech baseball coach Lane Burroughs. He attempted to mentally prepare the players and their families by noting, “It’s August in Louisiana. … We’re going to have to dominate these elements, aren’t we?
Casey Anderson, Emmitt’s father, smiled as he remembered that pep talk.
“I don’t know what dominance is,” he said. “More like enduring and surviving. »
But parents and coaches said they heard hardly any complaints from the kids, who seemed delighted to have the chance to end their season at the showpiece event of every DYB season.
2023-08-13 01:11:32
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