Four Southeast Guilford Falcon football players had to be taken to the emergency room at a local Greensboro hospital last Friday night after their game with Eastern Guilford was over.
SEG lost 35-14 to EG and Brian Webb, James Peguese, Tyrell Anderson and Alex who we don’t have a last name for; all were treated for dehydration and severe cramps.
The EG trainer said these were some of the worst cramps that he had ever seen. Mark White was the attending trainer for SEG.(Mark does a great job and he has been on the scene for many years at SEG.)
The Southeast players were wearing UnderArmour underneath their shoulder pads and this may have caused increased body heat and therefore the loss of more fluids and in turn led to the increrased dehydration and taken the cramping to a much higher level. In many cases the UnderArmour doesn’t allow the body to breathe and traps the fluids in. We all have learned over the years, that sweating is the body’s air conditioning and cooling system and the body has to be allowed to sweat/breathe and if not, then heat stroke may occur.
At one point the EMT’s were forced to hook up EKG machines to the players to monitor the risk of the increased heart rates. Eastern Guilford coach Scott Loosemore agreed with many of the concerned on-lookers and said he had never seen anything like this. The word on one of the Falcon kids is that his cramping was so bad that his toes got totally stiff and they were sticking straight up in the air, in a locked position.
This was the first game of the season for SEG and they weather was very warm and the humidity was up and both of those elements are contributing factors to cramping being more common. A scary situation but all will turn out well if SEG can grab a win this week vs. Southwest Guilford.