Colonel football team beats the heat with morning practices

It seems that since the beginning of time, people have been trying to figure out how to beat the heat of a south Louisiana summer that can stretch into October. Plus, there’s all that humidity, afternoon storms, thunder, and lightning.

The Nicholls football team may have come up with a way to, if not beat the heat, then to deal with it in a more comfortable fashion.

Instead of what has been traditional late afternoon start times for practice in college football has been shifted to the mornings on the Thibodaux campus. It’s a practice the team has been using for practice since last year.

“I think for us, it makes sense,” Nicholls coach Tim Rebowe said. “When the school was on board scheduling some later classes, so we can get our guys in, I think it fits around here from the heat in the afternoon, the rain, the lightning, for all the things, I think it makes sense for us to practice in the morning.

“I think our players like it. We are not getting them here at 5:30 in the morning, at the crack of dawn, that’s not our plan. If we can be on the field for 7:45 and have a good, two-hour practice, they go to class and still have the afternoon to have some meetings if they want to come back and watch some extra film, to do some study halls, to do some other things. I think for a time factor it really works well for us.”

The afternoon heat can be especially grueling. Also, because of safety protocols instituted several years ago, nearby lighting can force a team off the field for a game and even the practice field. With afternoon storms a daily that, those delays can interrupt practice time.

“Scientifically, obviously it’s a hot place and we are starting to realize that,” said Tyler Trahan, the Director of Sports Medicine at Nicholls. “Even when we do practice this early, we’re seeing heat-related illnesses but not as much as we used to, which is a good thing. We’ve cut down a lot of heat-related illnesses. We are ‘beating the heat,’ so-to-say.”

The switch certainly has the seal of approval from the training staff and all the other behind-the-scenes personnel it takes to conduct a football practice.

“I love it,” Trahan declared. “We’re able to get a lot of our work done early and not be here until 7:30, 8:00, which we used to work every day during the football season from 6:30 to 7:00 (in the morning) to 7 p.m. It was crazy.

“The coaches’ schedule is still sometimes looks like that. Our schedules still sometimes look like that, but work-life balance has gotten tremendously better for all of us. You get more out of your sports medicine staff, more out of your coaches, more out of everybody.”

The players like the change as well.

“I like it in the morning,” Nicholls quarterback Patrick McQuaide said of practice. “When you get up and do football right in the morning, it just makes the day a lot better. We get extra time to come back and meet and stuff. I just think you get more out of practicing in the morning and come back in the afternoon, when we show up the next day, the day behind us is put to bed and we’re good. We make corrections and work through things we like and stuff we don’t like and just move on to the next day.”

“I love it,” said Jacob Parker, a senior linebacker. “You get everything out of the way, get to school, get to class. I think it gives guys a reason to be up and something to get excited for early in the day.”

“Practicing in the morning, it’s kind of different but it’s better,” said senior wide receiver David Robinson Jr. “It gets us out of the heat and gets us to do our schoolwork. It gets you up, so guys who might miss class you are not going to miss class. You are up, so you might as well go. It gives us more time during the day to get treatment.

“It gives our coaches a chance to watch the film, review it, and get us back in the afternoon and go over the film and move on to the next day.”

As a junior college transfer McQuaide is in his first year at Nicholls. As seniors, Parker and Robinson were around at the time of the practice time transition.

“Early, it was a transition,” Parker said. “It was understanding like, ‘we don’t go for 3:00 anymore. We have got to get up earlier that we usually do.’ I think it helped a lot with just being able to prepare better and have more time throughout the day to watch film on our own, get treatment and get things done along with going to classes and being a student athlete.

“We have our study hall hours we’ve got to get through it. Sometimes, we have like eight a week. You get more time after morning practice.”

“I was a little nervous because fall camp is like real early in the morning,” said Robinson. “You get tired of those early days. You wake up at 6:00 in the morning all summer then you go to 6:00 in the morning fall camp and then Coach (Rebowe) lets you know that you are going to be practicing in the morning. You’re like, ‘oh, man, you’ve got to get up early the rest of the time you are here.’”

For everyone involved, it was just getting accustomed to a new routine, according to Trahan.

“I think a lot of them couldn’t stand it because most student athletes don’t like early mornings,” Trahan said. “That was a huge transition. There was a lot of trying to get people going. In a football setting, it’s, ‘hey, we’ve got to get these guys going, we’ve got to get them going, get them going.’ It took so much time and effort, and we still have those days where it’s tough. You are in a long season, guys don’t want to wake up every day at 5:30 in the morning, but I think you just have to train and get accustomed to it. Just like weather, you get acclimated to it. It’s the same thing with a schedule. As the weeks have progressed, the student athletes buy into it, and they understand why we are doing it.”

Robinson certainly has adjusted.

“At this point, I’ve become a morning person. I wake up, get my feet on the ground and ready to go.”