Hogs reap benefits of air system

Aug 08, 2023

With the installation of a heat and air system for the University of Arkansas indoor football facility completed last week, the Hogs are seeing instant benefits for practices and will be able to utilize the space more for recruiting purposes.

Arkansas football chief of staff Pat Doherty said the ability to control the temperature inside the facility gives the Hogs more options when hosting recruits.

"The biggest thing that it's going to offer us, is year-round event space,"Doherty said. "We're looking at about 50,000 square feet of temperature control room, with a sound system, lightning. So we have the ability to do some dynamic stuff on official or unofficial visits. That's exciting.

"We utilized the space one time for an unofficial visit, it was still warm, but we got by, but now at least we can keep recruits and their families cool and comfortable. We'll figure out stuff as we go if we want to use it more. We can get creative with it now."

Arkansas and other schools utilize the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature to determine if practice is outside or taken inside.

The WBGT is a measure of the heat stress in direct sunlight, which takes into account: temperature, humidity, wind speed, sun angle and cloud cover (solar radiation). This differs from the heat index, which takes into consideration temperature and humidity and is calculated for shady areas.

The Hogs couldn't legally practice outside last Thursday with the wet bulb temperature being 94.

"We can't do any activities over 92 degrees on the wet bulb," Doherty said. "When the temperature is like a 100 degrees, that's where you're floating around that 92. If there's no wind, it's going to be higher, a lot of wind it's going to be lower."

The climate control will help the recovery process for the Razorbacks.

"In the recovery process and we want to jump in there every third or fourth day, we might be able to do that just to reload and let the guys recover a little bit but still get a good practice," Doherty said. "We've come to find out when those soft tissue injuries start happening on that fourth day when you're in the heat and practicing hard that's why the science says it's good idea to jump indoors or deload a little bit on that third or fourth day. We'll still get out there and get some hot practices, but we now have the ability to take a load off one of the days."

The ability to have warmer temperatures for November and December practices and for offseason workouts will pay off.

"We like to go in the early mornings in the winter, but if we have freezing temperatures, we're risking soft tissue injuries," Doherty said. "We had it one winter, we were in there and it was below 32 and we had some hamstring pulls. It can happen anywhere but now we have the ability to raise the temperature a little bit and practice in a warmer environment when we get those cold temperatures."

Prior to being named the Razorbacks head coach, Sam Pittman was the offensive line and associate head coach at Georgia where the Bulldogs opened new indoor facility in January of 2017 with heat and air capability.

"We're grateful that was have an administration that stepped up to provide us with this," Doherty said. "It's been one of Coach Pittman's biggest desires since he's gotten here to have some temperature control in there. So we really appreciate the administration supporting him and our student-athletes and taking their safety into account. We appreciate Hunter Yurachek and everything he's done for us."

Email Richard Davenport at [email protected]

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