Fading the heat: UGA flipping the script on heat safety
From 1980-2009, according to research from the University of Georgia, 58 football players around the country died from heat-related illness. Most of them were in high school, and Georgia had the most deaths of all 50 states.
As players around the state return to fall practice this year, however, they’ll be doing so under different circumstances. Policies developed by professor Bud Cooper and colleagues at UGA and the Georgia High School Association have flipped the script. Georgia now ranks among the very best at protecting its students from heat and is being held up as an example for high school associations around the country.
“We took Georgia from worst to first,” said Cooper, a clinical professor in the Department of Kinesiology. “We’ve mitigated the death. It’s not happening anymore.”