Hi all…. Figured I would share this ‘newsletter’ from last year.

Given that we have forecasted Thunderstorms, I start getting bombarded with text and chat messages, letting me know there is forecasted weather conditions, that may cause us to modify our practice plans. Ideally, I will put out a chat message, letting everyone know, that there is the possibility of a change or cancelation b/f noon. But given work scheduling, it will be as soon as I am able to. However, an hour to 45 minutes prior, I will let everyone know via “chat”, the status of the practice plans. If the practice is canceled, I will not this on the calendar too. If you don’t have notifications set on your app and phone, or don’t have the mobile app, I do not send out separate messaging, and cannot answer texts (we have about a 100 people who are with our team that are on this app ( parents, athletes and coaches), any many that are not getting notifications or have accessed this app. So please look to the app, for practice status. Also, you know your teen better than we do, so if our guidelines are Green, Yellow, or Orange, we rely on you to determine if your teen participates. We do not have mandatory practices, so your teen isn’t penalize for not coming to practice.
I also understand, many will cancel last minute, if the weather or air quality is not right for their teen…. no need to send me a text. Just change the status on the App.

Many may wonder, how we modify our practices and wonder what our guidelines/policy is regarding when to cancel practice, or make changes.

I have attached the NICA Weather Team Practice Guidelines document. Since I know you all can read, I’m not going to rehash all of the contents/guidelines. It is also available in our “Document” section, that you can always refer to or download.

Depending on the severity of the weather condition, we either cancel practice, or modify practice. It codes each weather/climate condition as Green, Yellow, Orange, Red.
Green= no changes
Yellow= depending on condition, it will modify duration and/or intensity, or to proceed with caution.
Orange = major change in activity intensity and/or reduction of activity time
Red= practice outside is canceled, but may have an alternative safe practice venue or time change.

First, I am ALWAYS checking weather forecasts and AQI’s (Air Quality Indexes) for the week, the day before, that morning, and by the hour…. so, I’m on top of what is going on, so no need to send me texts, letting me know things, unless, it’s radio silence on my end…. then that means, I’m buried with work (my day job), and haven’t made my morning/mid-day update, concerning heat/weather and AQI concerns. I use weather.gov and the AQI website that has the latest updated reading. I believe their is a website that provides live AQI updates. I will note this in the comments.

By noon, if there is a concern, I will send out a team chat message, for weather/AQI concerns, and on the scheduled practice comments. However, if you do not have the phone app of TeamApp, you will not get notifications of the comments, so you will need to manually check for these. If you have the phone app, make sure notifications are set up in TeamApp and your phone’s settings to receive these. Having the phone app, also allows for you to view “chat” messages on the website version, too!

An hour before practice, I will send out another message via the Team Chat message thread and comments, with an update. If I have to, I will cancel practice based on the NICA guidelines. With this said, I rely on parents and teens to know their own health conditions, ie heat sensitivity, hydration levels, fatigue, and asthma. Sometimes, the best plan for “you”, may be a rest day, or an indoor workout.

I will look at alternative ideas for group indoor activities, if heat/smoke is too bad for outside. These may have size limits, so preference will be given to those who RSVP to the scheduled practice. If any parent and/or coach has any ideas regarding a facility that will allow us to utilize indoor spin bikes, let me know. But, we may have to shift our practice time for that day, to accommodate their facility….

For Saturday practices – if forecast show heat indexes impacting the hours scheduled, I may move the practice to an earlier time. If this heat wave continues, we may need to do this, otherwise, it really hinders our endurance and sustained efforts training.

Hope this is helpful. I believe these guidelines correlate with the Oregon State athletic guidelines.