It was already a busy day for first responders around Dodge City, Kansas.
By midafternoon on Aug. 7, they were working a collision between a train and a pickup truck, a controlled burn that got out of control at a scrapyard and a fire at a trailer park.
Then, at 4:49 p.m., the attention of almost every emergency responder in Ford County shifted.
That is when Joshua Thompson, director of security at Dodge City Community College, called 911.
“I just need to make a report to a sheriff’s deputy,” he told the call taker. “We’ve got a track team that was out practicing. They were supposed to run a certain route, and a student has not come back, and we can’t find her.”
The missing student was freshman Delia Montes, 19, who was participating in one of her first college cross-country practices.
It was 102 degrees — seven degrees above average for that date — with a heat index of 105. The National Weather Service had posted a heat advisory for Dodge City. It was the hottest day of the summer so far.
And by the time sheriff’s deputies and Dodge City police started searching for Montes she had been missing in that oppressive heat for at least two and a half hours, perhaps even an hour longer, a KCUR and The Midwest Newsroom investigation discovered. Montes, according to her family, suffered an exertional heat stroke and would spend three weeks in intensive care at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita.
At one point, the hospital said Montes was “on the verge of death,” according to Ford County communications records.
Since August, KCUR and The Midwest Newsroom have reviewed emergency response documents, acquired DCCC documents using the Kansas Open Records Act, listened to hours of dispatch and 911 recordings, and interviewed former DCCC runners and trainers to understand what happened on Aug. 7.
'That was the Wild West'
It only took a few days for Dodge City to rally around Montes and her family. A GoFundMe campaign has raised almost $10,000 to date. There was also a fundraiser at the local mall, and a Dodge City gym, WIT Athletics, is donating the proceeds of a 5K run to the Montes family.
Her family says Montes is a great athlete and involved in the community.
“She’s smart. She’s kind. She’s very involved. She’s always willing to help,” her cousin Joselin Villanueva told KWCH in Wichita.
Montes graduated from Dodge City High School. When she and two of her teammates signed their letters of intent to run at DCCC, it warranted a mention in the Dodge City Daily Globe.
“Their determination and excellence in distance running have paved the way for them to compete at the next level,” the paper wrote.
Six months later, Montes would collapse in a cornfield near death, and another Dodge City High School teammate would end up in the emergency room, both victims of the oppressive heat.
After the Montes news broke, social media lit up with stories of questionable coaching by head coach Cole Ballard and his assistant coach Bianca Richards.
“This is not surprising to me,” former DCCC runner Delfino Juarez wrote. He ran cross-country in 2021. “I decided to transfer out because of the horrible coaching and treatment I received.”
In a phone interview, Juarez, a Georgia native, said he went through grueling practices his first week in Dodge City. Temperatures were 100 degrees or above during the afternoon runs, which could be up to 8 miles.
“I just started seeing black,” he said. He thought to himself, “Maybe we shouldn’t be out here in 102-degree heat.”
Juarez said the long, early workouts resulted in an injured Achilles tendon. He said his lower leg was swollen and he was limping. He said he was told by Ballard and Richards that “it’s all mental. It’s all in my head” and that it was normal to suffer in athletics.
Runner Irving Murueta told a similar story. He said Richards was particularly harsh.
“She would abuse her authority. She would mock injured athletes,” he said. He also said Richards would threaten injured runners. “If you’re not going to run, I’ll strip your scholarship,” he said.
The charges of abuse came not just from young athletes who felt disrespected. They also came from past DCCC trainers.
“That was the Wild West. They followed no protocols, nothing,” said Deb Rodda about her three years at DCCC, where she worked directly with men’s and women’s cross-country runners. Rodda is now an assistant athletic trainer at Adams State University in Alamosa, Colorado. She previously trained Olympic skaters.
“I would literally get in arguments with the coaches about who should run,” she said. When the head trainer stepped in to suggest practices were dangerous, Ballard “didn’t listen to him. He just wanted production.”
She said that both Ballard and Richards would threaten to pull scholarships if an athlete was hurt. For some female runners, Richards “made changes in their diet that were dangerous,” Rodda said. That included forcing them to eat less to get their body fat percentage down to match the men’s.
“There was very much a lack of concern for the athletes. That’s why I left,” she said.
Neither Ballard nor Richards responded to emails seeking comment on those specific allegations. Richards declined to answer questions from KCUR and The Midwest Newsroom at a cross-country meet in Chanute, Kansas, in early October. Ballard was not at that meet.
Ballard has been a track and cross-country coach at DCCC for 19 years, according to his online biography. He was a football player at Garden City Community College and Kansas State University.
Richards was a distance runner at Dodge City before finishing her career at Georgia Southern University. She has been an assistant coach at DCCC for seven years, according to her DCCC biography.
Another former trainer at DCCC was somewhat less harsh toward the coaches.
“There was always concerns of how things were run,” Tyler Gallegos said. He worked in Dodge City for four years, departing in 2023 for a high school in suburban Denver.
Specifically, he said, two trainers weren’t enough for all of DCCC's 350 athletes, and there was a lack of equipment. Still, Gallegos said, he “had a good relationship with Ballard and he was open to recommendations.” But he stressed that he rarely worked with cross-country or track athletes.
After just a year at DCCC, Juarez, now an engineering student at the University of Georgia, transferred to the University of Central Missouri where, he said, things were completely different.
“If the heat was bad later in the day, we had indoor practice or early morning or late afternoon, but never in outrageous heat,” he said. “Everything was done the right way there, unlike Dodge City Community College. I absolutely regret ever attending this place.”
When asked at the trustee meeting about charges of past dangerous practices, DCCC Athletic Director Jacob Ripple said, “not to my knowledge.” That would be the last question Ripple would answer from KCUR and The Midwest Newsroom.
Dangerous heat is at the center of what almost killed Delia Montes. And it wasn’t just a recent concern. “The sports medicine team never checked the weather,” Rodda said.
Hot day, no shade
On Aug. 7, the temperature when cross-country practice started at 1:30 p.m. was 102 degrees with a heat index of 105, according to the National Weather Service. “Limit Outdoor Activity,” the Weather Service heat advisory warned. “If you must be outside, take breaks in shaded or air-conditioned areas.”
Instead, Ballard and Richards directed the men and women to run west of campus around a cornfield with no shade.
But DCCC — like most schools, leagues and conferences — doesn’t rely on Weather Service data. It relies on something called wet bulb globe temperature, generally referred to as WBGT.
“It’s essentially a human measurement of how the body is going to cool based on how much moisture you have in the atmosphere,” said Eric Aldrich, University of Missouri assistant professor of atmospheric science. WBGT considers temperature, humidity, wind speed and how direct the sunlight is.
A week after Montes was found unconscious in the cornfield, DCCC said in a statement that the practice “was monitored according to the Heat Policy put in place by the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference” and was “well within the established guidelines.”
DCCC Trustee Chairman Gary Harshberger went further. “You know, they don’t call off the war when it’s too hot. You just don’t call off the war when it rains,” he said after the August DCCC board meeting.
He also stressed that athletes’ well-being is the college’s primary concern. “We’re all about their health and safety,” Harshberger said.
But others say running long distances in the hottest part of an August day is unsafe.
“Running at 2 p.m. in 102 degrees is just dangerous,” said Gene Johnson, a former college cross-country runner, high school track coach and superintendent of the Shawnee Mission School District. “It’s just stupid,” he told KCUR and The Midwest Newsroom. “It’s not the right thing to do.”
The fix is simple; run early in the morning or late in the evening, not in the middle of the day.
In fact, that’s exactly what Garden City Community College did when it started cross-country practice a week after Montes landed in the hospital. The team, according to the college, ran at 6 a.m. The high that day was 83 degrees.
Heat alone isn’t dangerous. It is what people do in the heat.
“Remember, it is exertional heat stroke, not environmental heat stroke,” said Scott Anderson, former head football trainer at the University of Oklahoma, who has written extensively on heat stroke. Anderson said it is a combination of heat and activity that creates danger.
It’s not that long-distance runners don’t have core temperatures that soar in hot weather; they do. But their bodies are different from football linemen who are more likely to suffer exertional heat stroke.
“Distance runners have compensable heat loss, meaning although they are generating heat, they are dissipating it at a consistent rate,” Anderson said.
Missing data
KCUR and The Midwest Newsroom asked DCCC for weather data from the day Montes collapsed. The colleague responded with a statement saying coaches and trainers monitor the weather with an app from a company called Perry Weather.
“Due to the fact that we monitor the weather on the app, we do not have written records of the wet bulb temperatures,” the statement said.
However, one of Perry Weather’s marketing points is it automatically records data, “ensuring you stay compliant without the tediousness and potential errors of traditional manual methods,” according to the company website.
Asked about that claim, DCCC reiterated that it has no data.
“In response to your latest request, please be advised that we do not maintain records of the WBGT measurements,” the college said in an email.
DCCC President Harold Nolte and Board of Trustees chair Harshberger said the Aug. 7 practice followed conference guidelines.
“They could have a meet in that heat,” Harshberger said.
DCCC gets the Perry Weather app as part of its yearly membership dues to the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference, but Perry Weather also sells weather monitoring stations to clients. The company said this provides “hyper-local weather conditions” with updates “in real-time.”
Dodge City Community College decided against purchasing a monitoring station and has not said where its data comes from or how often it is updated. Perry Weather referred all questions to the school.
As far back as February 2024, Perry Weather was in contact with Ripple, the DCCC athletic director, suggesting that a monitoring station would provide coaches and trainers with “more accurate information and add historical data as well,” according to an email obtained with the Kansas Open Records Act.
Over the next four months, Perry Weather repeatedly emailed Ripple to discuss an on-campus monitoring station.
On March 25, 2024, the Perry Weather representative emailed this: “If this comes down to just money here, let me know and I’d love to have a discussion with you and try my best to get you to a number” the school could afford.
One Kansas school that bought the monitoring station was Garden City Community College, about 50 miles west of Dodge City. In June 2021, GCCC spent $999 for “Full Service Installation for Outdoor Warning System & Weather Station,” according to an invoice obtained with an open records request.
That purchase came almost two years after a football player died from exertional heat stroke after his first day of practice.
Anderson, the former Oklahoma football trainer, said that even with accurate information, WBGT is “overemphasized” by coaches and trainers. “There should be a judgment factor,” he told KCUR. “It should not be an independent, deciding factor.”
Ripple did not respond to a question asking why DCCC decided against buying the Perry Weather monitoring station.
The search for Delia
Delia Montes disappeared from cross-country practice hours before the Ford County Sheriff and Dodge City Police were alerted.
Precisely when she went missing is unknown. But a deputy spoke to one runner who said Montes may have disappeared as early as 2 p.m., a half hour into practice.
Coaches Ballard and Richards and Athletic Director Ripple did not answer a list of emailed questions, including when they realized Montes was missing, who was looking for her and why it took so long to contact the sheriff for help.
But KCUR and The Midwest Newsroom investigation pieced together what happened on the afternoon of Aug. 7.
The first official report was made at 3:15 p.m. when DCCC campus security was called.
“Received a report of a missing student/potential medical incident,” the report said.
It would be more than 90 minutes — at 4:49 p.m. — before DCCC called 911. All that time, Montes lay passed out in brutal heat.
Once it began, the search for her was immediate and, for Ford County, massive.
The sheriff's office had half a dozen deputies looking for her, four officers from the Dodge City Police Department were dispatched and medics from the county fire department were standing by.
The search party included Bill Carr, the veteran sheriff of Ford County, who — 45 minutes later — made a critical decision.
At first, the DCCC security people who called 911 seemed confused about where they were.
“I don’t know the roads,” the caller told the dispatcher.
It would take 20 minutes — until 5:10 — before searchers knew the exact running route, according to dispatch logs. The team was running a section of farmland — a mile by a mile — about a 10-minute jog from campus.
By this time Montes had been missing for at least two hours. The search had picked up steam and was focused around a cornfield just west of town where the stalks were about 6 feet tall.
It was still 100 degrees.
At 5:12, the sheriff’s office called for drones to aid in the search.
At 5:23, Dodge City police confirmed that Montes was not at home and that her Apple Watch couldn’t be tracked.
At 5:31, sheriff’s department Capt. John Hunter radioed that he had just learned one of her teammates was already in the emergency room.
“A girl that brought her to practice and that did run with her made it back to the trainers and they deemed that she go to the hospital for dehydration.”
Then, four and a half minutes later, Master Deputy Dave Thomas told dispatch, “She has been located,” he said. “We’re going to be in a cornfield just east of 109 road.” He found her about 15 feet deep into the field. Thirteen seconds later, Thomas radioed that Montes was unconscious.
The rescue became more urgent.
About 30 seconds later, the sheriff and Deputy Derek Hoskinson arrived.
Carr, the sheriff decided that Montes had to be transported immediately.
“Communications, we got her in the backseat. We got a faint pulse,” was the radioed message.
“Time seemed to be of the essence, so we decided to transport,” Carr said in an email to KCUR and The Midwest Newsroom.
Four minutes later, near a highway overpass, Carr and others met medics who transported Montes to St. Catherine Hospital in Dodge City. She was then airlifted to Wesley Medical Center in Wichita.
The next day Wesley called the sheriff’s office looking for the deputy investigating the case.
“(Montes) is on the verge of death,” said Ford County dispatch logs.
Montes spent at least three weeks in Wesley Medical Center in Wichita. Her family used money from the fundraisers to pay for hotels and meals so they could be nearby.
She has since been released, according to KJCCC Commissioner Mike Saddler. Her family, who said DCCC has provided little information, has not commented publicly since Montes was released.
Nolte, the college president, said he tried to check on her when she was in the hospital but was told she wasn’t listed.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation was called in at the request of the Ford County sheriff after Montes was discovered. A week later, the agency said that it found no “evidence that a criminal act occurred.”
The KBI told KCUR and The Midwest Newsroom it was not specifically investigating actions by coaches the day Montes collapsed.
The day before Montes collapsed with heat stroke, there was another emergency at DCCC.
Paramedics were called to transport a women’s soccer player. This was not a case of exertional heat stroke.
Ford County dispatch logs said she had an epileptic seizure.
The high temperature on Aug. 6 was 100 degrees, which the Epilepsy Foundation warns can be dangerous.
“Some people with epilepsy may be sensitive to heat. Staying cool is important,” according to its website.
Quick response, treatment
Exertional heat stroke can be devastating. Muscles can break down, sending toxins into the bloodstream that can cause severe damage to the lungs, kidneys, heart and liver, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
Among student athletes, big football lineman are most at risk from exertional heat stroke. In fact, 97% of football exertional heat stroke deaths are linemen.
“Linemen heat up faster and cool down slower than other players,” according to a paper co-authored by Anderson.
In 2024, 10 high school football players died from exertional heat stroke or other medical conditions, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research.
However, preventing all of that is simple, say experts: Plunge the athlete into a tub of ice water. But doing it quickly is critical.
“The primary goal with any patient with EHS is to cool him/her as immediately and rapidly as possible,” a paper published by the National Athletic Trainers' Association said.
The Midwest Newsroom is an investigative and enterprise journalism collaboration that includes Iowa Public Radio, KCUR, Nebraska Public Media, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR.
There are many ways you can contact us with story ideas and leads, and you can find that information here.
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METHODOLOGY
To tell this story, Sam Zeff located and interviewed two former cross-country runners at Dodge City Community College and two former DCCC athletic trainers. He went to Dodge City seeking interviews with the Board of Trustees chairman, the college president and the college athletic director. He also traveled to Chanute, Kansas seeking to interview the assistant cross-country coach who figures prominently in the investigation. Zeff also used the Kansas Open Records Act to obtain information from Dodge City Community College, Garden City Community College and the Ford County Sheriff’s Office. This is Zeff’s fifth exertional heat stroke investigation.
REFERENCES
Dodge City athlete hospitalized after heat stroke; outdoor practice policy explained (KWCH । August 15, 2025)
Heat & Cold Illness Policy & Procedure 2023-2024 (Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference)
Heat Stroke (Cleveland Clinic)
Preventing Exertional Heat Stroke in Football (American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine | June 14, 2024)
Summer Safety for People with Seizures (Epilepsy Foundation । June 12, 2023)
TYPE OF ARTICLE
Investigative: In-depth examination of a single subject requiring extensive research and resources.
