Football Camp Is Here, Y'all: Mama Hen's 5 Real-Talk Rules for Surviving the Season

So it's camp time, y'all. 🏈 Football camp season is officially here, and whether your baby is heading into a high school two-a-day or reporting to a college camp far from home, Mama Hen wants to sit you down for a minute. I've been in this thing for over 30 years. I've raised athletes, fed athletes, hydrated athletes, and prayed over athletes. So let me give you five quick tips — five things to do and NOT do — to get your player through camp season in one piece.

Grab your coffee. Let's talk.

No. 1: When the fight breaks out — and it will — walk away.

Let me just tell you the truth. Put a bunch of tired, sweaty, competitive young men on a field in the heat, and somebody is going to start yapping. Testosterone plus competition plus exhaustion equals a scuffle. It happens every single camp. Nobody's got a camera out there, so it's all fun and games until it's not.

Mama Hen's rule: the last thing you want to do is get involved in that fight. Tell your player now — before they leave — to keep their cool and walk away. It's not worth a suspension, an injury, or losing their spot before the season even starts.

And baby, I still don't understand this one thing: when the fight starts in football, why do y'all take the helmets off? You're standing there with a padded helmet built to protect your face, and you snatch it off to go swing? No, sir. Keep it on. Better yet — keep it out of the fight altogether.

No. 2: Get your rest. This is a foreign country now.

Football camp is like sending your child off to another country. There are certain times of day they're reachable and certain times they are gone. Set the expectation with your family and friends right now: camp season means your player is unavailable.

Tell them to check in maybe at lunch, send a couple messages, and then again at night right before bed — usually around 9:00 or 9:30. By 10:00, that child is going to be in la-la land because they are flat-out exhausted. 😴 And that's exactly how it should be. Their body does the real growing and repairing while they sleep. This is also why the little late-night phone conversations have to go (more on that in a second).

Rest isn't lazy. Rest is training.

No. 3: Leave them girls (and boys) alone.

Now don't shoot the messenger. I'm talking to all my athletes here. Camp season is not romance season. Send them packing — respectfully — with a simple message: "I'm in camp season. I'll see you around January when the season is over."

Trouble and distractions. Trouble and distractions. That's all a relationship situation is during camp. Late-night texting cuts into that rest we just talked about, drama messes with focus, and focus is the whole ballgame right now. There's a time and a place for everything, and camp season ain't it. January will still be there.

No. 4: Eat, eat, EAT. 🍎🍗

Listen to me. Your athletes are burning through calories all day. They are still growing, still building new cells, still repairing muscle. If they don't put fuel in, the body has nothing to work with.

And this is where so many young players get it wrong. Underfueling is one of the most common and dangerous mistakes in teen sports nutrition, and when a growing athlete doesn't eat enough it can slow growth, delay development, reduce performance, and increase injury risk. Active teenage boys often need somewhere between 2,600 to 3,200 calories a day, and football players in two-a-days sometimes need a second breakfast just to keep up. For football players, breakfast is non-negotiable, and many need a second breakfast later in the morning to meet their calorie and performance demands. Bitekit + 2

So here's my rule, and I don't care if your child "doesn't eat breakfast." You break that fast anyway. Find a shake. Grab some crackers, some yogurt, a banana, a peanut butter sandwich, some fruit. Something. Then keep quality food coming all day — lean protein, whole grains, fruits and veggies. Their body cannot perform on empty.

No. 5: HYDRATE. This is the big one.

If you only hear one thing from Mama Hen today, hear this: hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. This isn't just me being an overprotective mama. Football players are out there in the hottest, most humid part of the year wearing pads and helmets, and that combination is genuinely dangerous. In fact, research from Johns Hopkins found the risk of heat-related illness is more than eleven times higher in football than in all other sports combined. According to a study from Johns Hopkins, the risk of developing a heat-related illness is 11.4 times higher in football than in all other sports combined. KSLA

The programs doing this right are serious about it. Here in Texas, the UIL now requires schools to give athletes unlimited access to cool water during rest breaks and to keep full-body ice-water immersion equipment on site in case a player goes down from the heat. Rest breaks must involve unlimited hydration and rest with no activity, and it is a requirement that all schools have equipment allowing full-body immersion in ice water if an individual is experiencing heat illness. That tells you how real this is. University Interscholastic League

So here's the plan. Carry those gallon jugs around. Decorate them, put your name on them, make it a whole thing — whatever gets your player drinking all day long. And it's not just water. They need their electrolytes, and yes, salt is your friend right now. Adequate calories, carbohydrates and sodium give the body the electrolytes it needs to perform in the heat, and even hydrated athletes can struggle if they are under-fueled. I can't eat all that salt at my age, but your young athlete can and should during the season. KY3

What's NOT your friend? Sodas. My athletes did not have a single soda during their season, and I stand on that. Skip the energy drinks too. Stick with water, Gatorade, Propel, Liquid I.V., electrolytes. Because the last thing you want is that child jumping out of bed at 2 a.m. because their foot, their calf, their back, or something has locked up in a cramp. Hydrate all day and you keep those middle-of-the-night charley horses away.

That's it, y'all.

Mama Hen has just given you five things to do and not do during football camp season: walk away from the fights, get your rest, leave the distractions alone, eat like your performance depends on it (because it does), and hydrate like your life depends on it (because it might).

Send this one to another football mom or dad who's got a player heading to camp. We're all in this together. Good luck out there, y'all — and go get 'em. 🏈