WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Aug. 13, 2014, was a day that changed the Shogran family forever.
That's the day that William Shogran was told his 14-year-old son had died while training for his high school football team.
"When you lose a child, it's way different than any other loss because it's a loss that you're not expecting, nobody should expect and no parent should ever go through, and it's one that doesn't really get any easier," Shogran told WPTV.
William Shogran Jr. was at football camp with the Sebastian River High School football team when he fell ill and died. His cause of death was heat stroke.
"We found out from the autopsy report that, after the paramedics had worked on him for about an hourish on site trying to cool him and got him to the hospital, his core temperature was 107 (degrees) after that long," the late boy's mother recalled.
With this summer's heat wave, the Shogram family is sharing their story, raising awareness about the dangers of heat stroke.
High School
Heat, lightning impacting outdoor practice for athletic teams on Treasure Coast
Progress has been made. In the years that have followed, more protections are in place.
State lawmakers passed the Zachary Martin Act for student-athletes in 2020. The bill requires the monitoring of heat stress and modifying athletic activities based on heat guidelines.
That includes making cooling zones available and establishing hydration guidelines. Each school's action plan must include cold-water immersion or equivalent before transporting a student for heat stroke.
"It doesn't matter whether you're playing football, marching band, soccer, any of those sports, you have to be aware, as the coach, the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion and then heat stroke," Courtney Shogran said.
