West Limestone High School marching band member Heather McLemore drinks from a large bottle of water and cools off with a wet cloth as she tries to stay cool during band camp. The Wildcats began camp yesterday and students are drinking lots of water and taking breaks often to keep from overheating.

For hundreds of students in Limestone County, summer is more than days off school and fun in the sun. It means days, sometimes weeks, of work to get ready for the upcoming football season.

For band directors, it means making sure students know how to prepare and handle the heat when work has to be performed outdoors.

“I always stress the importance of taking care and hydrating in the weeks leading up to the camp season,” said Bryan Pigg, who will soon start his first band camp as Elkmont High School’s band director. “… We make sure we hydrate often during practice, but we stress the importance of hydrating today for tomorrow.”

Steven Porter is in his 22nd year as a band director and his second year at Athens High School, where band camp runs three weeks in July and includes 12-hour days of rehearsals and exercise. He said he routinely encourages students to avoid junk food.

“I encourage them to stay off sugary drinks — soda, Gatorade, Powerade,” Porter said. “There’s just too much sugar in them, so it’s counterproductive. Just drink water and lots of it.”

East Limestone High School’s band director, Jennifer Janzen, said Gatorade wasn’t even an option when she was a student in band. She said science has come a long way in helping everyone at band camp stay hydrated and educated, though she admitted mistakes are still occasionally made.

“It only takes one day,” Janzen said. “You only drink a milkshake before practice one time.”

Janzen has taught at East for 24 years, where camp is split up to allow students more time for recuperation. Camp days are 10 hours long and four days a week for two weeks before school starts.

East’s lineup this year features 190 students performing in a space more than twice the length and three times the width of a basketball court. As such, it’s pretty much impossible to learn and rehearse a show entirely indoors, but Janzen and others make sure the hottest hours are spent that way.

“We start camp at (noon) and stay inside until about 4 p.m.,” said Patrick Dailey, Ardmore High’s band director. “We’ll break for dinner at 5 p.m. and start setting drill at 6 p.m. So a majority of our outside time is during the latter portion of the day. And we have lots of water breaks.”

Vechiel Stone, band director at Tanner High School, said frequent water breaks help regulate body temperature and keep motivation high. He strongly discourages band directors from withholding breaks as a form of discipline.

“I recommend members and staff drink between 1/2 and 3/4 quarts of water per hour of drill, but no more than six or seven quarts of water per 24 hours,” Stone said. “… Too much water intake can result in a condition called ‘hyperhydration’ or ‘water intoxication.’ This can happen if you drink so much water that it dilutes the sodium in your bloodstream, already decreased by perspiration.”

Janzen said the number of breaks taken is one more example of science’s influence on band camp. At East, students take two-minute “gush and go” breaks every 30 to 40 minutes instead of a longer break at longer intervals.

Students throughout the county are mostly responsible for bringing their own drinks, but it’s not unheard of for former students, local businesses or band parents to donate bottles of water or snacks.

“We had a band dad that just got 2,000 bottles donated,” Janzen said. “A lot of parents will bring in a case (of water) for kids who forget.”

While the occasional episode of forgetfulness may be expected, it is ultimately the students who are in charge of making sure they are ready for the long, hot days ahead.

“The best way to handle heat is not what we do, but what they do,” said Mark McChristian, the former Elkmont High School band director and new assistant band director at East. “Hydrate well before camp starts and continue to after going home. … The best way to beat it is to get ahead of it.”

Another way to get ahead of it is to stay active, even when it’s not marching season. Porter said he has noticed a decrease in activity among students compared to when he was a student.

“The activity level is a lot less,” Porter said. “We were active the whole month of June. We were on our bikes, outside playing, hitting the park to play ball. … It made a difference.”

Students should also be aware that as hot as it may seem, it could always be hotter, Janzen said.

“Our record heat index is 116 degrees,” she said. “I tell the kids every year that until it gets to 117, it’s not hot.”