Bucking a revered tradition in Texas football, a Dallas-based trainers' group says high school coaches need to cut back on two-a-days.

Grueling practices in the summer heat are too dangerous, even reckless, the National Athletic Trainers' Association said Thursday in calling for more safety and less hitting among players in their pre-season drills.

"We didn't do this for the coaches or parents, we did it for the student athletes," said Mike Carroll, head athletic trainer at Stephenville High School who helped write the report.

There's not a consistent set of guidelines, and "we're trying to fill that void."

The proposals – aimed at stopping heat-related illness, which has killed 39 football players on all levels since 1995 – highlight the need to be watchful over young athletes, said North Texas football coaches. But several were unenthusiastic about the call for scaling back their twice-a-day practices in early August.

Southlake Carroll Coach Hal Wasson said his staff is educated on the dangers of heat exhaustion, and that it's common sense to go inside on hot days. Southlake Carroll is one of several local schools with an indoor practice facility.

But Wasson said some exposure to the outside elements is important.

"As professional educators, you do everything for safety first," he said. "But I would be really surprised if we pull back and said, 'OK, two-a-days are nonexistent.' Working out in this heat, that's part of the journey of getting the kids physically and mentally ready to play."

No school in Arlington ISD has an indoor workout facility. District policy stops all outdoor activity when the heat index reaches a certain point.

"I don't know that it would matter if you had one practice or two practices, you're still going to be in 105 degrees in Texas," said Arlington Bowie Coach Kenny Perry. "If you have a kid come in out of shape, you could have the same problems."

But the trainers' group said the gut-it-out days on the field should be reduced and replaced with what it called a "heat-acclimatization plan."

Besides calling for no more than one practice a day during the first week and alternating one-a-day and two-a-day workouts during the second week, the cautionary report proposed longer breaks between practice sessions and a limit of three hours per session – with a maximum of five hours in a day.

In Texas, schools must take a minimum one-hour break between practice during two-a-days.

The new guidelines "would be simple to implement and aren't costly – and they have the potential to save lives and prevent injuries," said Lynn Hickey, director of athletics at the University of Texas in San Antonio.

"It would be a serious mistake to blow them off because of concerns that your team may not be as competitive or if you believe these types of tragedies don't occur often enough to warrant such changes."

Carroll, the trainer who also is assistant athletic director at Stephenville High School, was skeptical that most coaches would follow the voluntary guidelines. "The mindset of a lot of coaches will be that if they follow these, they won't be practicing as much as some of the teams they play against, and therefore they'll be at a competitive disadvantage. And that is unfortunate," he said.

"The next time there is a tragic incident ... parents may want to know why their school" ignored the recommendations, he said.

Hickey also praised the report for saying all schools should have certified athletic trainers on hand before, during and after practices.

Some North Texas coaches said that as a way to minimize the heat effects, they practice twice in the morning during two-a-day sessions. Plano ISD athletic director Gerald Brence, the former longtime Plano football coach, said it worked well for him.

"You bring your kids in at 7 a.m. and have them practice an hour and a half and then go back out around 10:30 or so and go to noon and call it a day," Brence said. "Most teams in the state are doing that now instead of the old-fashioned way of bringing them back in the afternoon."

As for the group's suggestions, Brence said he would "prefer they let the coaches handle it and keep moving on, but I respect what they're trying to do."

At Colleyville Heritage, which has no indoor facility, Coach Mike Fuller said the debate over two-a-day workouts is nothing more than semantics since the UIL already regulates what high school teams can do.

On a normal August day with two practices, Colleyville Heritage may work out from 6 to 8 a.m., Fuller said. Players will then go inside, get off their feet, eat and probably watch film. After a 60- or 90-minute break, players will then work out another hour and a half and be finished by noon.

"The bottom line is that you've got to use common sense and let them have all the water they want," he said.

Dallas ISD athletic director Jeff Johnson and head athletic trainer Phil Francis know all too well the dangers of athletes practicing in the heat.

Eric Brown, a Carter football player, died Aug. 2, 2004, collapsing after a three-hour workout. The heat index on the practice field was 105, a point when heat stroke becomes a dangerous possibility.

Dallas now has guidelines for preventing that, and Francis said they are strictly followed.

The group's report "really coincides with what we're already doing," he said. "We could certainly see this coming because kids are dying out there because of the heat, and that's a preventable death."

Johnson said it takes time for athletes to become acclimated to the heat. Dallas ISD football teams aren't allowed to practice between noon and 6 p.m.

The district also weighs their players in before and after practices for the first two weeks of workouts.

If an athlete is not within 2 percent of his weigh-in weight at the next practice, he's not permitted to work out.

Players also take mandatory water breaks every 20 minutes, Johnson said.

Staff writer Brandon George contributed to this report.