By Ella Harvey
As a very injury-prone girl, I often find myself walking into the athletic trainer’s office. For those of you who may be unaware, the sports trainers are the amazing medical staff ready to assist athletes during games when there is an injury and afterward with physical therapy.
Now, this is not an ad for the trainers, but whether you go to do physical rehab, assess a problem, or just socialize, the training room staff and the room itself are always extremely lively. Formally, this is called the sports medicine department, but everyone has coined it “the trainer,” which seems more fitting, and also takes much less time to say.
There are currently four athletic trainers operating the sports medicine room, including Chris, Alissa, Trina, and Janeka. And yes, they don’t mind us calling them by their first names.
All of the trainers had very similar stories about how they became interested in sports medicine: they grew up around sports as teenagers.
Chris Archambeault, the Director of Sports Medicine, has loved the job ever since he was injured playing hockey in high school. His athletic trainer helped him recover enough to go play again. “I enjoyed athletics so much and I had such a good relationship with the athletic trainer that I worked with in high school,” he said, “so I decided to go with athletic training.”
Janeka Reid has been at Lovett for 9 years and was injured while playing in college. Janeka felt that her athletic trainer in college was not as helpful as she would’ve liked, so she thought, “You know what? I’m going to be an athletic trainer.”
Alissa and Trina both had very similar stories. There were programs and positions in their high schools that helped introduce both of them to the career. “My high school had a phenomenal high school athletic trainer who took me under her wing and said, “Hey, why don’t you join me?” And I’ve been doing it ever since.” Trina said.
Similarly, Alissa took a specific sports medicine class in high school that allowed her to shadow an athletic trainer. She said the junior year class introduced her to everything. “And then my senior year, I did the apprenticeship and really fell in love with helping the kids and being in an athletic environment,” Alissa explained.
There is a lot of preparation involved before the trainers go and work at games. They have numerous kits full of medicine, equipment, and bandages. A more important piece of equipment that they bring and use in case of emergency is an AED, which would be used if an athlete were to go into cardiac arrest and need an electric shock to restart the heart. They also bring crutches, ice, and a splint bag that contains wraps and braces for fractures and joint injuries.
If an athlete gets injured during practice or a game, the athletic trainers are quick to get them into physical rehab to help them return to the sport as soon as possible.
To clear an athlete from injury, trainers consider several factors. Chris looks “at strength and motion, and I’m making sure every couple of days that they’re increasing the range of motion,” he explained. Alissa pointed out that everyone’s bodies heal and recover differently. “We tend to track it by agility exercises or just even how they’re feeling, strength, range of motion, things like that,” she said.
The athletic trainers also have interesting work hours, not the normal 9-5. The training room opens at lunchtime, which is 1:20 pm, and if there are many late games, the trainers will not be done at Lovett until late in the evening.
This does not seem to affect them because all of the trainers unanimously agreed that the athletes are their favorite part of the job. “I love getting to know y’all, but also help y’all get back to playing the sport you love,” Alissa said.
Trina loves being around kids and coaches and seeing everyone succeed. When athletes do get, she helps them turn that around and move on to accomplish their goals. “And that’s the best feeling,” Trina said.
