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The 2001 heat stroke death of National Football League Pro-Bowl offensive lineman Korey Stringer brought weather-related complications into the national spotlight.

Following the collapse Thursday of rising Northwest High School junior Edwin "Dek" Miller, 16, during conditioning drills, and his subsequent death Monday, county football coaches said they were "over-cautious" and would "be a fool to consider anything over the kids' safety" when it came to practicing in the summer.

"I'm really comfortable that with the things we can control, there is nothing else we can do," said Good Counsel's Bob Milloy, entering his 38th season as a head coach in Montgomery County. "If a person has a heart problem or something, it's not 100 percent guaranteed to work. But we try to do everything within our power."

The cause of Miller's collapse is unknown. His uncle, Alston Nah, said, "All we know is, there were signs of dehydration." The high temperature Thursday was 81 degrees.

There have been 39 heat-related football deaths in the U.S. since 1995, 29 at the high school level, according to the Annual Survey of Football Injury Research, released in February by the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina.

On Aug. 18, 1998, 13-year-old Daniel Bell of Silver Spring, an incoming freshman at St. John's (D.C.), collapsed and died during a preseason football practice.

In 2008, four high school players died of heat stroke. In the death of Max Gilpin, 15, in Louisville, Ky., criminal and civil charges have been filed against the coach, David Jason Stinson. Both cases claim Stinson denied his players water.

The Montgomery County Public Schools Department of Athletics sets specific guidelines for coaches to follow defending on the Department of Environmental Protection's Air Quality Index. On Code Red days, for instance, water breaks are mandatory every 20 minutes and practices are limited to one hour.

Dr. William "Duke" Beattie, MCPS Coordinator of Athletics, said Thursday's workout at Northwest was not a football team practice, but a voluntary "all-school conditioning program," and that coaches were present.