The high school experience, whether it’s defined by the classroom or the playing field, is about learning.

We already knew that about the players, but the grown-ups shouldn’t kid themselves. It goes for coaches and administrators, too.

After a hellacious week of late-summer weather that made July feel like Labrador on Christmas Eve, we all learned something important.

That the adults in charge of our children’s safety get it.

Wednesday was just another harrowing hump day for those of us confined to a cubicle in our air-conditioned offices. For local high school athletic teams, however, Sept. 1 was a particularly pivotal point on the calendar.

It was field hockey’s opening day. It was perhaps the most important day of preparation for Friday and Saturday’s full football slate. Soccer players and cross country runners needed that afternoon to prepare body and mind for their first weekend of competition.

All were greeted by conditions that fell somewhere between brutal and inhumane on the meteorological spectrum.

And each one had principals, athletic directors, coaches and game officials looking out for their best interests and precious futures.

In a concerted effort that deserves universal applause and appreciation, tri-county school officials wisely chose not to fool with Mother Nature.

Practices were abbreviated, moved indoors, switched from on-field activity to a film session, or canceled outright.

Games were postponed or delayed. Water breaks were mandated and multiplied.

Best of all, everyone lived to learn — and play — another day.

The chain of command in your local emergency preparedness department couldn’t have responded to Worry-cane Earl any more efficiently.

It’s remarkable on at least two fronts.

First, this is Maine in September, not Alabama in August. You would expect our skiing and hockey coaches to be better trained in treating frostbite than our football and soccer authorities at handling sunstroke.

Second, and much more importantly, it hasn’t always been this way.

Not more than a generation ago, when most of our current high school football coaches were playing the game, practice would have been scrubbed for a death in the community or a bomb threat. Period. The suggestion of going half-speed or without pads would have been laughed to scorn.

If the scorching sun left you tired or sluggish, you were given a couple of salt tablets to swallow. Drinking water was inexplicably seen as a detriment, or worse, a sign of weakness.

See? You can teach old dogs a thing or two.

Tragically it took the deaths of NFL player Korey Stringer and one or two healthy teenagers every year due to wake up the sporting community. We now recognize that heat-related illness can kill you whether you’re a 350-pound football lineman or a 130-pound distance runner.

State athletic commissions sprung into action after Stringer’s demise at Minnesota Vikings training camp in August 2001.

Maine, despite our isolation from triple-digit temperatures and the perhaps incorrect perception that our sports aren’t as serious as those in Florida and Texas, marched in tandem.

The Maine Principals’ Association instituted football rules limiting heavy protective equipment and prohibiting contact for the the first four days of camp. Those traditionally are the days when the temperatures are the hottest and the players are farthest from game shape.

Otherwise, MPA rules about weather are mostly confined to safety in a thunderstorm. The only rule is good judgment.

The organization requires its coaches and athletic directors to undergo training. From there, it’s a matter of local control.

In what was statistically the longest heat wave to hit our state in 15 years, control and common sense prevailed this week.

Our schools and their officials absorb an inordinate amount of heat for the things they do and don’t do. In this case, all of them handled the literal heat with intelligence and wisdom.

We learn the hard way, or we learn by example. Our educators set the right example this week.

It paid immediate dividends in the health and welfare of our athletes. The long-term payoff comes when those same kids are the supervisors making the hard decisions someday.

As a columnist, I say good job. As a parent, I say thank you.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is [email protected].