Many sports can play in the heat, or practice because there is some rest time in between plays and or reps in a workout, the one sport that does not is cross country.

With Temperatures in the upper 90’s again today, this will mark about the seventh day of practice that teams must find a way around running in the direct sunlight after school to prevent any heat related illness.

The Keota Invitational was cancelled tonight because of the heat, and one of the teams that was supposed to attend was Columbus Junction, but instead they had their second meet cancelled this season.

Head coach Steve Riley says he has some ideas on how to still have a good practice while at the same time keeping the kids cool and having fun. Luckily for the Wildcats they have a shaded trail that they can run on that is slightly cooler, and Coach Riley said he will split up the work in order to keep the kids cool, but frustrations of the heat are there.

“Hopefully this is the last of it, [because] it’s starting to get really old,” Riley said. “This is two meets now that we’ve had cancelled because of the heat.”

Luckily for the cross country runners, the heat wave looks to break on Thursday after a slight chance of storms. All the area teams are in action this week despite the early week’s heat.