Part of what struck the 80-year-old Jarrard about the tragedy is the practice didn't seem out of the ordinary. Whistles blew. Players ran. Coaches yelled. Same as it was when he put on pads and ran through the midsummer heat "back when we didn't even get water."
Over on an adjacent soccer field, Brian Bale saw things differently. Watching PRP practice during that muggy afternoon with the heat index in the mid-90s, Bale was appalled by the conduct of the football coaches.
"Those coaches thought that they were training young teenagers for the Navy SEALS team instead of a football team. I never once in the time I was there saw anyone offered a water break," Bale, a soccer dad, wrote in an e-mail to school administrators. "I did, however, hear the coach say numerous times that all he needed was one person to say that they quit the team and all of the suffering and running and heat would be over."
The 15-year-old Gilpin collapsed around 6 p.m. following a series of wind sprints called "gassers." On Monday, in a rare instance of a coach being held criminally responsible for a player's death, Jason Stinson pleaded not guilty to reckless homicide charges.
While prosecutors say the trial is "not about football ... not about coaches," the case is highlighting football's punishing training regimen, with some wondering if it will force changes in practice routines.
Deaths in football practice are few in number but one or two a season is not unheard of. Thirty-nine players died from heat-related injuries between 1995-2008 according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina.
Dr. Frederick Mueller, the center's director, said most happen during the first few days of practice when players are still getting accustomed to the heat and the singular stress playing football has on the body.
Lawsuits often follow such deaths. Jeff Gilpin and Michele Crockett, Max's parents, filed a wrongful death civil lawsuit against Stinson and other members of the coaching staff before Stinson's indictment. Coincidentally, the day Stinson was arraigned former Minnesota Viking offensive tackle Korey Stringer, who died from heatstroke in 2001, was back in the news. His wife, Kelci, reached a settlement with the NFL that includes a provision that the league will support her efforts to create a heat illness prevention program.
Tom Crawford, the executive director of the Tennessee Football Coaches Association, says football practice already has been changing - for decades - as the result of advancement in training techniques and common sense.
"The lawsuits have nothing to do with it as far as I'm concerned," said Crawford, who has been in coaching 40-plus years and is currently the defensive line coach at Brentwood (Tenn.) High, where his son Ron is the head coach. "Who knows, we may have one next year that goes down. That's a possibility when you play contact sports, whether it's a hit or the heat."
Still, he's concerned about what a guilty verdict in the Stinson case could mean.
"I'm worried about how it will effect the coaching and the coaching profession if he's found guilty of this," he said. "Every coach can look at what he did a little bit. You see yourself going through the same thing on occasion and not intending to. It's a tragedy."
The game has long-since evolved from 11 iron men playing both offense and defense into a highly specialized year-round commitment for some, but practice is still a time for coaches to test the mental and physical toughness of their players, hoping the trials of summer pay off in the fall.
"It goes with the profession that it's a unique sport and conditioning is a part of it," said Grant Teaff, executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, which has a membership of around 12,000 coaches at the high school, college and professional level.
"That's why it's important for coaches in our association to be as knowledgeable as possible. We utilize every means we have as far as protection for student athletes. It's a thin line in a sense of when you're conditioning. There are certain barometers that you adhere to."
Not everyone, however, measures conditioning the same way. St. John's University coach John Gagliardi has won more than 460 games and four national titles by taking a decidedly less practice-intense approach. His players at the NCAA Division III Minnesota school never go full speed, avoid calisthenics when possible and will move practice inside if the gnats from the nearby lakes get a little too annoying.
The College Football Hall of Fame coach knows the Johnnies are the exception.
"It always bothered me that some coaches might over-condition them," Gagliardi said. "We dared to do differently. I know that many years ago in the 1950s we quit wearing full gear in practice, went into the shorts and we were ridiculed at first. All I know is we like what we're doing and it's working for us."
Some experts say the problem isn't practice, but how quickly coaches react when a problem develops.
Stinson's attorneys argue the coach closely followed the Kentucky High School Athletic Association guidelines regarding heat, scheduled three water breaks during the practice and even shortened it by 30 minutes.
Gilpin's collapse was particularly unusual in that it came a month after practice started. The 6-foot-2, 220-pound sophomore had played junior varsity, was attempting to earn a spot on the varsity and had participated in an offseason weight training program. Gilpin experimented with the supplement Creatine during the offseason, but Michele Crockett says her son told her he stopped taking it a month before his death. Gilpin was also taking the drug Adderall, used to treat Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, when he collapsed. But its impact - if any - is not clear.
It was decidedly warm the afternoon Gilpin collapsed, yet six previous practices were just as hot according to the heat index measurement notes Stinson kept as part of KHSAA rules. There were also dozens of other schools practicing throughout the city that day without a major medical incident.
Mueller said part of the issue isn't necessarily the training techniques but the reluctance of players to speak up when they become distressed for fear of showing weakness.
"You get that football mentality where you don't complain about being hurt or not feeling good," Mueller said. "You don't tell coach you don't feel good."
Dr. Douglas Casa, director of athletic training education at University of Connecticut, said regardless of the tenor of practice, it's almost impossible to guarantee a player won't become overheated because of the nature of the game.
"You can do things to decrease risk," said Casa, who is also the co-chairman of the National Athletic Trainers Association Inter-Association Task Force on Exertional Heat Illnesses. "But remember you're doing football practice in America in summer - you're always going to have some risk. You can't eliminate all risk unless you send them inside to play Wii or Nintendo."
Casa's concern isn't with the way practices are run, but the lack of proper medical equipment to treat players when their core body temperature rise to dangerous levels. Casa said Gilpin could have been saved if there was an ice tub on hand when he collapsed.
"Every few minutes that pass, the survival rate just plummets," Casa said
National Federation of State High School Associations executive director Robert Kanaby said his group is carefully watching the case and knows this could signal a further shift away from certain coaching techniques.
"The culture of sports is always changing and practices that were in effect years ago sometimes disappear and sometimes reappear depending on the cyclical nature," Kanaby said. "Sure, we know a heck of a lot more today about conditioning than we did 30, 40, 50 years ago.
"It's part of the evolution of the sport and the evolution of the science surrounding sport."
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