Real Talk for Sport Parents Podcast

Hosted by Samantha Livingstone

Ep. 25 – When the Heat Rises: Keeping Kids Safe in a Win-At-All-Costs Culture

In this episode, host Samantha Livingstone welcomes Melissa Fortenberry, a longtime competitor, mom of three, and former product leader at companies including Expedia, VRBO, and Philips, to discuss sports parenting, values, and athlete safety. Fortenberry describes growing up in Texas as an identical twin in a highly competitive sports family, becoming a four-year varsity soccer letterman, and carrying a “do your best” mindset into parenting, prioritizing effort and fun over outcomes while resisting early team politics, specialization, and constant travel. She shares how seeing intense youth-sports competition and experiencing heat sickness at a 107-degree Texas football game led her to research heat risk, learn limits of symptom-based guidelines and heat index, and found Heat Sense, a wearable and app/dashboard solution that estimates core body temperature and heat strain to prompt timely cooling breaks and support performance and safety, with a long-term goal of broader adoption and legislation.

· 02:56 Texas Roots and Twin Rivalry

· 05:47 Killer Instinct Athlete

· 07:45 Effort Over Outcomes

· 09:38 Competition Beyond Sports

· 18:40 Feeling Like Outsiders

· 26:11 Finding Play Again

· 30:35 Travel Teams and Balance

· 34:29 Breaking the Feedback Wall

· 39:57 Heat Scare at the Game

· 41:48 Why Heat Rules Fail

· 44:31 Launching Heat Sense

· 58:40 Dreaming of Fun Sports

Quotes

• ” …their innate competitiveness, I think is something that we have had to learn about. If it’s something they’re kind of born with or something they might develop, I would say that, um, I was born with it. My dad used to call it the killer instinct. Like if you’re born with it, like you will do anything to win, win and you hate losing.” [05:54]

• “Because at the end of those games, you know what I said, I didn’t say, did you try your best? I said, was it fun?” [29:36]

• “If your body, the 98.6 is actually that everyone knows it’s actually your core body temperature. And so when your body goes up to 102, your reaction time is gonna slow by 10 to 15%.” [48:45]

Social Media and Links

· RTSP Instagram

· samanthalivingstone.co

· heatsense.com

· LinkedIn: @melissa-turner-fortenberry

· Instagram: @heatsenseapp

Melissa’s Bio:

Melissa Fortenberry grew up wired to compete. A twin who played every sport through the YMCA, made boys’ soccer teams until high school, and became a four-year letterman, she came to sports parenting with a deep love for competition—not reluctance.

But she also came with a philosophy: sports should be fun, and effort matters more than outcomes. In a culture that can consume families with year-round travel teams and D1 dreams, she and her husband have held the line on letting their three kids try different things, do their best, and actually enjoy it.

After 25 years leading product at Expedia, VRBO, and Philips, a 107-degree football game turned her into a founder. Watching her son in full pads on hot turf, she couldn’t stop thinking: if I’m overheating in the stands, what’s happening to him?

What she found was a system built around weather and symptoms—not the athlete. HeatSense replaces that guesswork with real-time visibility, so coaches and parents can act before heat becomes a problem.