How Kansas high school football safety and opportunity matches up with the region

Kansas high school football might have a new problem.

The Kansas State High School Activities Association (KSHSAA) adopted an updated heat acclimatization policy in 2018, and it seems to favor larger schools over the smaller ones.

In the new policy, teams:

• Cannot hold two-a-days during the first week of practice, which started Aug. 13
  
  
• Must hold players to helmets only during their first two days of practice
• Must hold players to helmets and shoulder pads during their third and fourth day of practice
• Can hold full-contact practices on players’ fifth day of practice
• Cannot hold back-to-back two-a-day practices after the first week
• Cannot hold practices longer than three hours, including conditioning, stretching and weight lifting

The problem is most big schools have spent a good chunk of the summer together anyway, learning plays, schemes, lifting weights and conditioning. Many smaller schools haven’t.

At Derby, coach Brandon Clark has developed a bit of a machine, with three Class 6A state championships in the past five years. Clark said a lot of the Panthers’ success is credited to what they do during the offseason.

“I get it with some teams that don’t do much all summer,” Clark said. “But it’s nothing to us. We don’t have to get used to the heat. We may have three or four guys, but they’re not going to be taking any reps anyway that weren’t here all summer.

“By day 1 of practice, we are more well-prepared than we’ve ever been because they allow us such a free summer until (July) 15.”

So when Derby put on the helmets Aug. 13, the players were already conditioned and didn’t need any extra practice time to get ready for their Week 1 game against Garden City. Meanwhile, Garden Plain — a 3A school of 125 students — could use some more time.

Coach Ken Dusenbury said compared with where his team was at this time last year, his players seem a bit less conditioned.

“The intention of the new rules is absolutely in the right place,” Dusenbury said. “Anything we can do for player safety, we are all for it. But I think for us, we feel like it works better to have two-a-days, so we can work hard in the morning and go lighter after school when it’s hot. But now we have to work hard in the afternoon.

“So I think there were some unintended consequences with the rules.”

KSHSAA football administrator Mark Lentz said the state’s policy comes down to what the high schools tell them and what the association gathers as “best practice” at national and regional meetings throughout the year.

Lentz said he has received a bit of feedback about the heat acclimatization policy — some good, some bad.

“I think some of the rural schools, it’s harder to get your kids in than some of the bigger schools to be honest,” he said. “But we can’t just pick and choose who the policies do and don’t apply to. The policies have to go for the whole state.”

One possible solution could be starting the season, or at least the practice schedule, earlier to give smaller schools more practices to implement new plays, schemes and play calls.

Kansas gives teams three weeks of weekdays to prepare for their first game Aug. 31. Although other states in the region started playing games Thursday and Friday, and some states started playing even earlier, the buffer time between first practice and first game and the regular season duration is mostly consistent.

In Nebraska, players are subjected to the identical heat policy KSHSAA implemented in 2018. Nebraska started practice Aug 6, one week before Kansas, and started games Thursday and Friday, one week before Kansas.

Nate Neuhaus, Nebraska School Activities Association (NSAA) football director, said the states’ high school sports governing bodies bounce policies a lot among one another. But start dates are often state-to-state.

“We always start on the Monday of week 6 on our school calendar,” Neuhaus said. “Next year it falls back a year on (Aug.) 12. That’s just the week our member schools chose to start. Some states start before. Some start after.”

One misconception between state lines is the length of the regular season, and a cog in Kansas’ scheduling that gives way to speculation about opportunities to play.

Nebraska plays a nine-week regular season schedule. Kansas plays nine guaranteed games in Classes 6A and 5A, with week 9 working as a virtual play-in game to the playoffs. In Nebraska, only 15 teams make it to week 10, the first week of the postseason.

In Oklahoma, teams can play up to 10 regular season games, but two of them are scrimmages to help teams “in the periphery of our state,” said Mike Whaley, the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association’s football director.

Oklahoma started practices and games a week early compared with Kansas schools, too. And it’s been like that for a while.

“It’s been that way since I played in the (19)70s,” Whaley said. “What has changed is we have done some things in the last 5-6 years. We used to start on a Tuesday and we backed it up to that Monday, and we also put some mandates in for practice time.”

Lentz said if schools want to start the football season earlier, they need to bring their concerns to the association because KSHSAA itself cannot pick and choose to change particular policies.

But Clark at Derby, Dusenbury at Garden Plain and Marc Marinelli at Goddard Eisenhower all said they like having their players healthy and having policies in place that don’t allow them the opportunity to get overworked.

“I like it that our players are fresh,” Marinelli said. “They’re not dragging through the classroom. They’re dialed in. They can sleep in in the morning. Every day we do two-a-days, Wednesday is the worst practice of the year because they’re two days in, and they’ve practiced five times. But this year, they got after it.

“Maybe we’re missing a few reps, but with the tradeoff, I’ll take it that their energy is much better.”

With mild weather sweeping through Kansas during the first few weeks of practice, the biggest concern starting Thursday could be the heat kicking in when games start. Lentz said unfortunately there is nothing KSHSAA can do to prevent one-off instances like that.

But he said the association is constantly sending safety information to the member schools.

“We just continue to send documentation out to member schools,” Lentz said. “The more you can give them and get them to have a plan in place, that’s as preventive as possible. You never know when something is going to happen. But when you have plan in place, you’re doing everything you can do.”

This story was originally published August 27, 2018 at 8:37 PM.