CFC Players Must Beat the Heat in Summer Matches

Chattanooga-(WDEF-TV) We all enjoy some hot time in the summer time, unless you play for the CFC. When the boys in blue take the pitch during their summer season, the temperature is usually close to 90-degrees. At least they can use their hands to wipe the sweat away.

You have to wonder why the CFC bother with pregame warm-ups because it doesn’t take long to warm up for their summer matches.
Said CFC player Cameron Woodfin:”When you step onto the turf field, it’s immediately like ten degrees hotter. So if it’s 90 degrees outside, what we’re feeling on the field is probably about 100 to 105 degrees.”
Said head coach Bill Elliott:”They’re running for 90 minutes. I mean some of these guys are covering as much as seven, eight, or ten miles in a game. It’s brutal.”
Said CFC player Caleb Cole:”We get used to it, but again there’s nothing that really prepares you for the 90 minutes you play in a game. It’s just a different type of fitness. We call it game fitness.”
Game fitness means limited water breaks because there are no scheduled timeouts in soccer.
Said Elliott:”The typical American sports fan gets frustrated with soccer and they perceive sometimes as fake injuries and things like that on the international level. But a lot of times, that’s exactly what the guys are doing. If they’ve been fouled, they’ll lay on the ground an extra thirty seconds, forty seconds, or a minute, so their teammates can run over and grab a sip of water. You know slow the game down just a moment.”
Imagine the water intake at halftime.
Said Woodfin:”You’re just trying to get as much hydration as possible, and one of the things too is like we have little electrolyte packets. These little paper packets just everywhere. Just trying to get anything and everything to be hydrated.”
It’s hard to get a blow in soccer because you aren’t allowed to keep rotating players in and out.
Said Cole:”Yeah. In the NPSL was you are subbed off, you can not go back on. So in some ways, you’ve got to play hard and play as long as you can.”
Said Elliott:”What they do is remarkable. As I look back on doing it as a younger man myself, I don’t know how I did it. (laughs) But somehow you do.”