Wichita-area high school football teams open their seasons Saturday with kickoffs pushed back, practices moved to pre-dawn and ice baths on standby after 39 consecutive days at or above 90 degrees.

Four City League varsity games scheduled for Sept. 5 have been moved from 7 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., a Wichita Public Schools spokeswoman confirmed, according to KSN. The shifted games are Emporia at North (played at Northwest), Garden City at Heights, East at South and Northwest at Bishop Carroll.

The half-hour matters more than it might seem. Teams begin pregame warmups nearly two hours before kickoff. Pushing the start to 7:30 p.m. lets the sun drop lower before players begin accumulating exertion in full pads, the Wichita Eagle reported.

Wichita hit 104 degrees Sept. 1, marking the 39th straight day at or above 90, the sixth-longest streak in city history, KSN reported. Forecasters said the city could break the 2011 record of 42 consecutive days on Saturday. The all-time record is 52 straight days, set in 1980. July and August combined produced just three-quarters of an inch of rain at Eisenhower National Airport, the second-driest such stretch since 1888.

Several area coaches said they have never dealt with heat this deep into the preseason.

"This is my 10th year and this is uncharted territory we're in now … But we talk with our trainers and our sports medicine staff and with KSHSAA, we're following the right protocols and it's really black and white," Bishop Carroll athletic director Tyler Fraizer told the Eagle.

At Northwest High School, head coach Steve Martin has not held a single afternoon practice all preseason. His players report at 5 a.m. every day. Martin's alarm goes off around 3:30 a.m. He said the early schedule lets players finish before the final school bell rings, go home, do homework and "just be a kid" in the afternoon.

Andale head coach Dylan Schmidt said this is the first time in his 10 seasons that his team has stayed exclusively in morning practices during the third week of the football calendar. Schmidt said he worries about how players will acclimate to evening game-time heat after training only in the cool of early morning.

Maize South head coach Brent Pfeifer took the opposite approach. He shifted from early-morning sessions to evening practices as the opener neared so his players could experience conditions closer to Saturday night's kickoff against Buhler. Athletic trainer Bill Fargo has ice baths, ice buckets and cold towels staged at every practice. Water managers roam the field so no player has to wait for a scheduled break to get a drink.

At Wichita East, coach Ene Akpan has canceled practice twice in the past two weeks after his team's wet-bulb globe temperature monitor hit the "black" zone, KWCH reported Aug. 29. Akpan said East's turf field compounds the problem. His players met the Kansas State High School Activities Association (KSHSAA) minimum of 12 practices and remain eligible for Saturday's opener at South.

Kansas schools use wet-bulb globe temperature, or WBGT, to gauge heat stress on athletes. Unlike a standard heat index, WBGT factors in direct sunlight, wind and cloud cover alongside temperature and humidity. KSHSAA sorts readings into five color-coded zones. In the black zone, at 89.8 degrees WBGT or higher, all outdoor activity stops.

The heat has disrupted more than football. Soccer games have added hydration breaks roughly every 15 minutes, golf tournaments have been shortened from 18 holes to nine or postponed, and tennis schedules have been altered, the Eagle reported.

Martin, scanning forecasts that show Wichita flirting with triple digits the week of Sept. 7, noted that Sept. 9 was forecast to be a "chilly" 98 degrees.

Saturday, Sept. 5 openers: Emporia vs. North at Northwest, 7:30 p.m.; Garden City at Heights, 7:30 p.m.; East at South, 7:30 p.m.; Northwest at Bishop Carroll, 7:30 p.m.; Andale hosts Rose Hill; Maize South hosts Buhler.