Is it right to make Texas junior highers race in 100 degree weather?

Why the F would anyone live there? There's a reason I live just south of Canada. 4 real seasons and summers cap at like 88 degrees

My son is in Jr high and plays club soccer games in the afternoon when it is 100 deg. Kids get used to the heat. They aren't going to run that fast, but they can do it.

Our district imposed a wet bulb measurement for middle school this year. We had a few days where we had to move inside or cancel practice because of the heat.

While I hated missing practice, I think it makes sense. I'd much rather be cautious than call an ambulance.

first off, if anyone wants to pretend climate change doesn't exist, in my day, in that state, we would sometimes have high 60s lows (or at least low 70s most of the time) as early as late august. i vividly remember a hint of chill on some morning runs when i was first joining XC. in august. in texas. the morning temps have increased 5-10 degrees. it was around 80 this summer when it used to be closer to 70 in a moderate summer, mid 70s in a hot one. if it hit 80 in the morning it was like once or twice a decade. even on the high temp end, it might hit 100 occasionally. maybe dance around it a week. then go back down. none of this months at a time malarkey. most of the time 100 highs would be accompanied by 70 lows as it reflected a high pressure system and drier air. it is now 100 and humid. this is not normal here. people who come here and say "but texas is hot" are idiots.

during college i would come back and play summer ball here while i worked and games were 6pm weekends. you would roast. i didn't complain because i was working night shift one year.

second, i ran a couple meets in midday 100F heat which was gross and pointless.

third, on the guts of your question, texas is just now, this week, holding UIL football championships after the playoffs worked their way through. meanwhile XC was the first week of november. volleyball and other fall sports go deeper into fall than XC does. push XC state championships to now, run the season meets starting in september as temps drop. district mid-november. area weekend before turkey day. regionals first weekend december. state this week. fewer brains melted running scorcher meets with slow times. i never understood how 100F in the sun on a flat course prepared you to run what was inevitably a 60F overcast district meet over hills. which, i was good over hills in cool, and slow in the heat in a flat distance footrace.

fourth, i think there was one meet we ran with the JHS kids. other way of dealing with it is they -- as i always thought -- run their own schedules. they can run at 9 their place, we run at 9 at ours.

looking at it another way, i am sure the scheduling, both within the year, and within the day of the meet, reflected climate decades ago when TX started competing in XC. climate has changed. rather than unthinkingly xerox "when XC are just normally run," they need to start factoring in the temps.

i played select soccer there and we'd have early league and tournament games going as soon as 7 am. or at night. for some reason XC is stuck on 9 or 10 am. i don't get why 7 is too early when we might be on a bus to someplace that early anyway, and sometimes were getting back from road track meets or soccer games at like 11 or midnight. or watch football until 11. we can do late but not early, even though early is actually cooler weather......

i could also see one pressure being if you push the meets too far back then it's on top of the various national championships. but in soccer they could care less if the state tournament runs over stuff like dallas cup, which often affects who plays HS soccer, or whether certain teams disintegrate as people run off to club to prepare for and play in dallas cup. IMO surely they could say the same thing on XC. this is what we have to do for the heat. if it trips over your non-school schedule, that's your problem, your choice. but that would also mean some fairly conservative UIL leaders admitting it's getting hotter and that's a problem.

related point but they need to reconsider running afternoons in the hotter parts of the spring. i get in the cooler parts of the year, say february or march, sometimes the task was staying warm, and please run the meets with the finals in the afternoon. but as the year progresses that gets nuts. i started wanting to go home and come back for my race. which you could do in something like select soccer. go home. go to an AC'd mall. my race is at 4? i'll be back at 3:20-30. i wish. and then we'd often have district meet on a pair of afternoons and evenings. out of school a little early. start field events. run at like 5 or 6. which for runners was basically night racing. just odd. why can't we do morning prelims then night finals under the lights? almost every track setup is a football field with lights. pretty much every college/HS hybrid meet i went to, from both ends, under lights for the finals. so why can't we have a morning session and a night one? maybe field in between? send back the bus with the eliminated kids or ones who wanted to cool back off for a while?

I ask myself this question everyday. I'm currently in South Texas because of the military and I'm counting down the days till I get to leave.

My wife is a teacher. Kids at her school can't go outside for recess without a jacket if the temperature is below 60 degrees. If the temperature is below 50 degrees, no outside recess at all. To me, 50 degrees is still shorts weather!

no