Sports medicine trainers support athletes from the sidelines.
Christina Hubbard and Emma Garcia hydrate themselves through the chaos of the field.
From stretching, to spending one-on-one time with the athletes, to helping them heal from a serious injury, Tyler Junior College sports medicine staff and students work to help the players perform better.“Being able to see that the athletes are getting their confidence back from not playing for acertain amount of time to seeing them run that ball or make that goal is such a surreal feeling to experience,” sophomore Kinesiology major Emma Garcia said. “We are literally the team behind the team.”
Sports trainers aren’t just there to be accessories; athletic trainers provide a type of health care that includes preventing, identifying, evaluating, managing, and treating and reconditioning athletic injuries. They are not just there to hand out water or to hand out towels, nor to chat with the players; they do so much more.
“Apart from water, we do the coolers, injury ices, all the bags, all the taping, the wrapping, and all the rehabbing with treatments. We also have to do the ice baths, the file system that we have to keep up, and their medications for every single player,” kinesiology major sophomore Camila Pena said.
Running up and down the sidelines, covering leaking wounds, and making sure everyone ishydrated under the Saturday night lights, student athletic trainers are part of the group of people who hold the players up and help them exceed and perform to the best of their abilities.
Ronin Ponce and Camila Pena help the football players stay hydrated while transitioning from offense to defense.
“It’s like a play; you see the actors, but you don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes. So I feel like with sports medicine, we are taking care of them, making sure that they perform their best and that they look their best,” Pena said. “I think we don’t get that recognition, but that’s because we aren’t the performers. We are not performing, but we are helping behind the scenes.”
By practicing for at least six hours after school and staying up late after games, the team develops a strong bond. Ultimately, they all come together as a big family, supporting, cooperating and helping one another.
“They do a great job. They’re the people that take care of us so that we are able to perform at a high peak, the elite Saturday, and they just do it with such care and passion. Everything we do, we do with passion,” Apache defensive back, Bernock Iya said. “I play football with a passion. I know they do what they do with passion. They’re just more than, I guess what you would call, water girls. They really care for us.”
It’s also difficult to get into the program; student sports trainers must go through specific steps to get into the program. Overall the athletic trainers team has a total of 16 members, four of them being staff members, Eddy McGuire – Head Athletic Trainer, Travis Gray – Assistant Athletic Trainer, Breana Hyder – Graduate Assistant Athletic Trainer and Anna Dotie – Graduate Assistant Athletic Trainers. The other 12 members are student trainers. All the trainers are required to memorize types of injuries and how machines work and their functions, along with specific rehabilitations and treatment plans. The student trainers assist with different sports and change every semester.
“There is memorization in the athletic training field. The memorization consists of knowing the athletes’ injuries; past and present, knowing how to work each machine and what its job is, and how to explain it to them. Knowing stretches as well as exercises. Sometimes we as students can forget which stretch is which, or what exercise is what, and so we will either look in the folder we have stretches and exercises or we will ask one of our head trainers,” Emma Garcia, kinesiology major sophomore, said.
During the third quarter defensive back, David Moore works on modality on his quads with the help of Ja’Sydney Jackson, student sports trainer.
The student trainers have to apply for Tyler Junior College and then have to apply to the athletic training program application with three letter of recommendation letters, two to four state licensing requirements and two national certifications.
“On our website, at apacheathletics.com, under athletic training, there’s an application. There you fill that out and bring it back to one of us, and then we set up an interview where myself and the staff trainers all sit down and tell them what all is going to happen, what we do, and what we expect. We also give them a tour of the area. On the application there’s references; we call the references and go from there, and if we think there is a good fit, we invite them into the program,” Eddy McGuire, head trainer, said.