Abstract:
Boys usually practice soccer for long and successive sessions and may become dehydrated. Dehydration has a negative impact on both sport performance and health. Football players are exposed to intense training and competition workloads and are highly susceptible to dehydration. The objective of this study was to investigate the sweat rate and hydration status of Bely zeleke and Tana city U-15 male football project players in Bahirdar town, North-West Ethiopia. The research design was cross sectional study. Sweat loss, sweat rate and percent body mass loss calculation, urine specific gravity (USG) measures, urine color and thirst sensation were used to assess the sweat rate and hydration status of football players in one computational games. All 20 players were at least minimally hypo hydrated. U-15 male football project players age (mean 14.35 ± 0.48), height (mean = 1.60 ± 0.03) and Weight (mean = 48 ± 3.28) were participated in the study. The average values for all samples were, Sweet Loss: mean = 1.47 ± 0.36, Sweet Rate: mean = 1.00 ± 0.24, Toilet loss=0.03 ± 0.05, and Percent of body mass loss: mean = 2.36 ± 0.8. Participants replaced only 0.37± 0.21L of fluid. Based on USG results, 4players (20%) had well hydrated, 6 players (30%) had minimal dehydration, 9 players (45%) had significant dehydration and 1 player (5%) had serious dehydration prior to competition, 4 players (20%) had minimal dehydration, 11 players (55%) had significant dehydration, and 5 players (25%) had serious dehydration after competition. We found that most of the players are under a risk of dehydration and don’t replace the fluid they lost during competition. The study aims at validating hydration status and advising the players and coaches to use it as an easy and practical method.