Before cool fall days arrive, the first weeks of football practice and games come in the August heat. High-intensity drills beneath the hot sun can do serious harm to the body, even to those in excellent shape.
This week, the team talks with Dr. Douglas Casa at the University of Connecticut's Korey Stringer Institute about how to manage the heat and recognize heat illness before it’s too late. Casa also discusses the importance of high school teams having athletic trainers and weighs in on which is better: water or sports drinks like Gatorade. 
Korey Stringer was an offensive lineman in the NFL for six seasons who died on Aug. 1, 2001, due to complications brought on by heat stroke during training camp with the Minnesota Vikings.
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About the Across the Sky podcast
The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team:
Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia.
Episode transcript
Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:
Hello, everyone. I'm meteorologist Sean Sublette and welcome to Across the Sky, our National Lee Enterprises weather podcast. Lee Enterprises has print and digital news operations in more than 70 locations across the country, including my home base in Richmond, Virginia. I'm joined by my meteorology colleagues from across the sky, Matt Holiner in Chicago, Kirsten Lang in Tulsa, and my buddy at the Jersey Shore, Joe Martucci, with the Press of Atlantic City.
Our guest this week is Dr. Douglas Casa at the University of Connecticut's Korey Stringer Institute, where they research and advocate for athletes at all levels regarding safety and performance. Basically, we're talking about football practice in the heat this week. For those who not familiar, Korey Stringer was an offensive tackle for the Minnesota Vikings. He died from exertional heat stroke during the NFL training camp in August of oh one.
He played in 93 regular season games in his family, worked directly with Dr. Casa to develop the institute in the years that followed. He'll talk more about that in just a little bit. But I want each one of us to briefly talk about what we liked. I kind of liked the end when we had the all important Gatorade versus water question.
What are some of the things that that you really took home from from this discussion? We had. Let's start with you, Joe.
The Gatorade versus water ones. Good. You didn't bring up Powerade, though, Sean. Should have, you know, power ranked the three.
I'm of old school. There is there is lemon lime in orange and that is it. I am that Gen-X dude.
Oh, I love and light. Good and lemon lime is good. So you're going to hear the word wet bulb globe temperature a couple of times here throughout the pod. So it's a measure of heat stress. I'll let him talk more about it. But it's very important. And, you know, if you're an athletic trainer, you probably know what it is if you're not.
It's a newer concept that us meteorologists and those in the weather industry are trying to bring to light.
Yeah. And I think for me, the thing that stands out about this is everyone can relate to this because there's so many people involved with football with especially early on in the season and are used to this. You know, if you're not an athlete, there's so many people, the bands that go to the games, the cheerleaders is the fans, and there are a lot of games I can think of some Texas football games in Austin, Texas.
Usually that first game of the season, if it was a kickoff at 11 a.m. or 230, it's