Every coach walks into Friday night with a game plan. Every play is drawn up, every player knows their assignment, and every scenario from a fourth down to a two-minute drill has been practiced. Yet at many high schools, the people responsible for the safety of thousands of spectators walk into the same stadium with little more than a radio and good intentions.
That gap is where problems start.
A Home Football Game Is a Major Public Event
Think about what a typical home game involves. Hundreds or even thousands of spectators arrive at once. Students, parents, grandparents, young children, and visiting fans fill the bleachers. The band and cheer squads are moving around the complex. Concessions are running, cash is changing hands at the ticket booth, and traffic is backing up in the parking lot. All of it happens after dark, often with a small crew of administrators, volunteers, and one or two officers.
On any given Friday, your staff could face:
- A player with a serious injury on the field, or a spectator in cardiac arrest in the stands
- Lightning in the area, or a storm moving in during the third quarter
- A fight in the student section or between rival fan groups
- A parent reporting that their child is missing
- A threat, a weapon on campus, or a need to evacuate the stadium quickly
None of these are rare. Most athletic directors can tell you about at least one of them from the past few seasons. The question is not whether something will happen. The question is whether your team already knows what to do when it does.
What an Incident Action Plan Does
An Incident Action Plan (IAP) is the same planning tool that fire departments, emergency managers, and large event venues use. It follows the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the Incident Command System (ICS), so everyone involved is working from a shared structure and speaking the same language.
For a football game, a good IAP answers the questions that should never be figured out in the middle of an emergency:
Who is in charge?
The plan names an Incident Commander, a Deputy, and a Safety Officer, and it lays out who reports to whom through an organization chart.
Where is everything?
Gates, the Command Post, the medical aid station, AED locations, emergency vehicle access routes, the evacuation assembly area, and the Reunification Point are all marked on a site map and briefed to staff before gates open.
How do we communicate?
Radio channels, contact lists, and PA announcements are set in advance, so no one is hunting for a phone number during a crisis.
What do we do if… ?
Severe weather, evacuation, and lost or missing child procedures are written out step by step, so staff are carrying out a plan instead of improvising one.
Preplanning Prepares Your People
The biggest benefit of an IAP is not the document itself. It is the conversation it forces before the game.
When your athletic director, principal, School Resource Officer, athletic trainer, and local fire and EMS partners sit down together to complete the plan, they identify gaps while there is still time to fix them. Who has the authority to delay the game for lightning? Where do we move fans if we have to clear the bleachers? Which gate does the ambulance use, and is it unlocked? Who watches the exits if a child goes missing?
Answering these questions on a Tuesday afternoon is easy. Answering them with 2,000 people in the stands and a storm cell eight miles out is not.
A written plan also means your procedures do not walk out the door when a key staff member retires or changes jobs. The next administrator inherits a plan, not a mystery.
Preplanning Reduces Liability
When something goes wrong at a school event, one of the first questions asked is whether the school acted reasonably. Did they anticipate foreseeable risks? Did they have procedures in place? Were staff trained and assigned?
A completed, signed, and dated IAP is strong evidence that your district took its responsibility seriously. It shows that foreseeable hazards were identified, that roles were assigned, that public safety partners were involved, and that leadership reviewed and approved the plan. Compare that to trying to explain after the fact that “everyone knew what to do” with nothing on paper to support it.
No plan can prevent every incident, and a plan is not a substitute for advice from your district’s legal counsel. But documented preparation puts your school in a far better position than a lack of preparation ever will.
What is in the Free Template
To help schools get started, Safeguard Risk Solutions has created a Friday Night Lights Incident Action Plan template built on the standard ICS forms. It includes:
- ICS 201 Incident Briefing and ICS 202 Incident Objectives to set the mission for the night
- ICS 208 Site Safety Plan covering the hazards specific to a stadium environment
- ICS 203, 204, and 207 for organization assignments across law enforcement and security, fire and EMS, and event operations (gates, stands, parking, and concessions)
- ICS 205 and 205A radio communications plan and contact list
- ICS 206 Medical Plan including AED locations and hospital information
- ICS 213 General Messages for severe weather, evacuation and protective actions, and lost, missing, or abducted children
- Annexes with a missing child reporting form, a severe weather plan built around the 30/30 lightning rule, an administrator game day guide, a pregame announcement script, game day zone procedures, and an approval and sign off page
- A facility layout page and key locations checklist so every critical spot is identified and briefed
Every school specific detail is in brackets, so you can fill in your stadium, your staff, and your partners in one sitting and then update it each week.
Not Just for Football
While the template is built for Friday nights, the structure works for nearly any outdoor sporting event. Soccer, lacrosse, track meets, baseball and softball tournaments, and even graduation ceremonies on the field all share the same core needs: crowd management, medical response, weather monitoring, communications, and a plan for a missing child. Swap out the event details, adjust the assignments, and you have a plan ready for the next season.
Download the FREE Friday Night Lights Incident Action Plan template here.
If your district would like help customizing the plan for your venue, training your event staff, or running a tabletop exercise before the season, Safeguard Risk Solutions is here to help.
Reach out to Gary Sigrist at gary@safeguardrisksolutions.com.
Want a second set of eyes?
Every plan looks complete until you walk it. If you’d like a second set of eyes on your Friday Night Lights IAP — or want to run a tabletop with your administrators, SRO, and local fire and EMS before the season opener — reach out. I’ll help you find the gaps while there’s still time to fix them, not after.
