SE STAFF WILL KEEP CLOSE EYE ON PLAYERS

As Southeast Missouri State University's football team prepares to begin practice in the next several days, Wednesday's heat-related death of the Minnesota Vikings' Korey Stringer during training camp has caused Southeast coach Tim Billings and head athletic trainer Lance McNamara to take special notice.

Billings and McNamara acknowledge that the safety and well-being of the players are always first and foremost on their minds. But whenever tragedy strikes, it moves them to pay even extra attention to what is going on during workouts in the normally brutal Missouri summer.

"There's no question that, whenever something like this happens, it makes you look even more into what you're doing," said Billings. "Whenever an athlete dies because of the heat, it makes you re-think everything you do.

"We would never want to jeopardize the safety of any of our players. That's always the No. 1 thing."

Said McNamara, "Something like this certainly does get our attention even more, even to the point where I and coach Billings have extra discussions at length. We'll look at the heat index and what impact that has on practice as far as the time of day, we'll look at the type of attire to wear, water breaks and fluid replacement.

"We always think about these things anyway, it just is more in the front of your mind when something like this happens."

McNamara said common sense and plenty of fluids are vital in making sure athletes don't get overcome -- or worse -- by the heat. Since 1995, 18 high school or college football players have died of heat-related causes. Just six days ago, University of Florida freshman Eraste Autin died six days after collapsing of heat stroke.

"Our goal is always to try and over-hydrate the athletes. Every time an athlete comes off the field, we hit them hard with water," he said. "A lot of it is knowing your body and what the signs of heat illness are, like when you stop sweating or get disoriented or start cramping. That holds true not only in an athletic environment but also people in their everyday doings."

Still, no matter how much precaution is taken, McNamara emphasized that there is often no rhyme or reason as to how an individual's body will react to certain situations.

"We can plan for everything and we try to prevent as much as we can, but sometimes not even that is enough," he said. "You try to do everything right and just hope and pray it doesn't affect the people you're working with."

Billings said that, in extreme heat conditions, he'll go so far as to shorten practices considerably and maybe even cancel some of them.

"If it's too hot and humid, you can't get much accomplished anyway," he said.

* Because of a conflict with NCAA guidelines, Billings said he has pushed back the scheduled start of preseason practice by a few days.

Southeast's newcomers were supposed to have three days of workouts among themselves this weekend, but those now will be held early next week. The rest of the team will report Wednesday instead of Monday, as originally planned -- with full-squad practices set to begin the following day.

"We found out we can't start as early as we had originally planned," Billings said.

* The Ohio Valley Conference Football Media Day will be held Friday in Nashville, Tenn.

Each of the league's seven head football coaches will speak about their teams and the preseason predicted order of finish, along with all-OVC individual preseason selections, will be announced.