BRYANT, Ark. — Football season is in full swing, and Bryant High School's Offensive Line Coach Shane Clancy has been having a good year.
His Hornets are 5-0, and have scored 40 points or more in four of those games. However, those games aren’t the only ones Clancy attends.
He also volunteers to help with youth football games on Saturdays.
"My son plays,” Clancy described. “He's played for the last four years."
Usually, Clancy just opens and closes the stadium at the start and end of each day, and then becomes a parent who watches the games like everyone else.
On September 21, he was unexpectedly forced to take more of a direct role.
"It was hot. The kids had run a play, the game was going on, and somebody fell. At first, I didn't realize it was a coach, and then he kind of fell back down again," Clancy described.
Another coach was suffering from heat exhaustion— but Clancy was ready and quickly jumped in to action.
In part, this was thanks to training from the Arkansas Activities Association (AAA), which trains coaches for this kind of thing, according to Executive Deputy Director Joey Walters.
"Heat illness is something that is huge, especially this time of year," Walters said. "They have to be trained once every three years in heat illness, symptoms, and strategies."
With this training, Clancy and other volunteers were able to remove the coach from the field, prepare an ice bath, get an AED ready, and cool the coach down.
“I ran to get the ice baths ready and started filling it up with water and ice. There were plenty of people from the community that are in the medical field or just wanting to help out that were there assisting," said Clancy. "People called 911, and we got him in there and got his core body temperature down.”
Once paramedics arrived, the coach was able to make a quick recovery after spending some time in the ambulance— even having returned to the field at the end of the game.
"When I read that a couple of weeks ago. It’s just a big thumbs up that you know that we're doing the right thing, and our coaches are taking care of business there," Walters added.
Clancy also credits the trainers at Bryant, who he said have educated the coaches in the same way.
He said it’s important to be ready for situations like this and the training really does help.
"The crazy part about it was it was like watching one of the training videos,” Clancy said. “He had all the signs that you see in the videos or the education that they make us get, and so I just knew what to do."
For information on a heat illness prevention course recommended by Walters, please click here.