Unless it is an emergency, do not expect Thomasville High School football players to receive fluids intravenously anymore.

THS athletic director Chris Merritt and head football coach Zach Grage told the Thomasville City Schools’ facilities and athletics committee that they are eschewing the practice of IVs and instead are making an audible for sports drinks.

After images of players receiving IVs on a bus before a game surfaced, school board members questioned the practice. But Grage and Merritt assured them that at no point were the kids in any danger. Grage emphatically declared to the board members that “These are my kids. They are never going to be in harm’s way, I promise you.” Merritt also declared then that player safety was paramount. “If any one thinks for one moment that my staff and I would sacrifice the well-being of one of our students,” he said, “they do not know who we are or I guarantee they have not been around us for a long time.”

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution story last November revealed that several schools were using IVs. At the time, Grage told board members he saw it as an extension of the Bulldogs’ nutrition program. 

Rather than run the risk of the mesh between player safety and public perception, Thomasville High instead opted for sports drinks and other over-the-counter hydration materials. There are gels athletes consume to aid in hydration.

Grage is in touch constantly with coaches at colleges large and small, and he researched how those programs handle nutrition and other means of keeping athletes in tune. Last year, Grage told school board members he likes to be on the cutting edge of athlete performance and safety. The use of IVs wasn’t the only method to keep players hydrated and to prevent issues of cramping.

The big-time college football programs don’t just have what was called the training table — there wasn’t much training going on, it was for eating. They have invested time, effort and money into the proper nutrition to go along with the workouts to make athletes better at their sport. And the top-flight high school programs, and those that want to be at that level, often emulate what the college colleagues are doing.

Student-athletes were not in danger as they received IVs, Grage told school board members late last year. The Bulldogs football program will keep the IVs handy in case, in coaches’ parlance, a kid “falls out,” Grage said.

But to ease the minds of all, Grage and his staff are taking the IVs out of the playbook and have called an audible for sports drinks. It will be a little more costly, but we trust the Thomasville program will find the support it needs to afford the sports drinks to keep their young players safely hydrated.