Summers in Houston are really hot. Temperatures average -- average!!! -- in the low- to mid-90s from June through August. It breaks 100 with some regularity. BBVA Compass Stadium, where the Houston Dash play, is notorious for making the most out of the heat.
Back in Brian Ching’s day they didn’t need water breaks
Houston Dash managing director not too fond of NWSL instituting cooling breaks.
Although soccer has been played there for several years without significant heat-related incident, the NWSL did the sensible thing on Wednesday in announcing that cooling breaks would be mandatory for any match in which the heat index goes above 89 degrees. Similar precautions were taken during the World Cup.
Well, Brian Ching was not happy about this. The former Houston Dynamo player and managing director of the Dash wanted to make sure everyone knew that back in his day this would never have been done.
The whole time I played for the Dynamo we had 1 water break. Now the World Cup has 1 and they want to implement them in the league.
— Brian Ching (@brianching) July 31, 2014 Apparently, Ching feels as though the Dash are going to lose some of their home-field advantage if players and referees are allowed to take a 3-minute break to get hydrated on super hot days. Which, frankly, seems utterly ridiculous.
Sure, players have managed to mostly keep from dying when playing in extreme conditions in the past. But heat-related illness is also the leading cause of death among high school athletes. Playing in extreme heat can cause all kinds of horrible injuries and it hurts the quality of the games.
The argument against them isn’t entirely clear beyond “we never needed them before.” Soccer is the rare sport in which the game is effectively allowed to go on continuously with only a break at halftime. It lends itself to exhaustion injuries, maybe not as extreme as death all the time, but enough to cause anything from cramping to heat stroke. Why we wouldn’t choose to avoid these injuries if at all possible is a mystery.
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