During the first month of school, Humble ISD had strict heat restrictions that made it difficult for athletes to practice outdoors. This caused the athletic building to use all available spaces to help various teams work out to prepare for their seasons.
With the addition of the third gym in the past year, practice during heat advisories has become easier than before.
During the heat restrictions in August, the third gym and weight room were utilized to ensure every team could work out. During 7th period, sports like tennis and basketball often shared the third gym, while volleyball practiced in the main gym and freshman football worked out in the second gym.
“I mean you go from two gyms to three gyms, so you have another gym you can put some bodies in,” said boys basketball coach Jeffrey Hamilton, who is in charge of the scheduling of the gyms. “So it’s been great. It’s really helped out as far as giving everybody the same opportunity.”
With Hamilton being tasked with the large chore of dividing teams and spaces, he has worked to prioritize the teams and make it as fair as possible.
“The heat advisory kind of comes into effect at different times off the day,” Hamilton said. “Sometimes it’s last minute that you’re finding out somebody needs a gym. So trying to coordinate that last minute to accommodate everybody, that’s been the biggest challenge.”
The tennis team has seen multiple challenges since the start of their season. Being an outdoor sport that has been restricted to practice indoors has made the team focus on the things they haven’t necessarily prioritized, such as their technique.
“The hardest thing is we’re allowed to compete, but there’s restrictions more on the practice,” tennis coach John Macapaz said. “At one point we had more matches than we had actual practice days to practice on the court.”
Without having practice outside, the team struggled to acclimatize to the heat when it was time to compete.
By utilizing all the space available in the athletic building, the majority of teams have been able to prepare for their season. While in-season sports get the gym priority, off-season sports have to utilize the hallways.
“Because a lot of sports are using the weight room or using the athletic building or the track, pretty much everywhere is taken,” softball player Abbey Papadimitriou said. “Since we’re not in season, we usually just go in the building because there’s a lot of space.”
Softball has worked in the regular building to do conditioning after school and in the batting cages to work on fundamentals. Other sports, like football, have moved their practice times to be early in the morning to beat the heat.
During zero hour, after school on Thursdays, the athletic building becomes busier because all sports at all levels have the opportunity to practice. Because of the busy atmosphere, sports like tennis stopped offering zero hour for their players.
In recent years, the heat has proven to be a challenge to deal with, and coaches have helped make adjustments.
“It’s been an ongoing thing for us these past few years as the heat has gotten worse,” Macapaz said. “We’ve adjusted our practice times and we adjusted when we actually started practicing during the summers, so that we aren’t wasting time.”
