“It was on the border,” Herron said of that day’s weather reading, a complex formula of temperature, humidity and radiant heat. “We were planning on coming out in full pads, but we couldn’t do it.”
Scaling back the intensity of a football practice due to hot weather was once laughable in South Georgia, where heat, gnats and hard-hitting high school football are facts of life. But this year Georgia became the latest state to enact new rules to prevent heat-related deaths of high school football players, a category in which the state leads the nation.