Players and the cheerleaders take a knee as an athlete lays still. The crowd goes silent and hands are put together in prayer, hoping this injury will not be permanently damaging.
A sports injury is the worst part about any sport event and could devastate a player’s future career and life-long dreams.
Injuries are a fact of sports. A player can become injured at anytime. An injury can come out of any game and out of any single play. It is a gamble that players take daily.
The steps taken for a sports injury vary between the staff that takes care of the injury. Tyler Junior College Head Athletic Trainer, Eddy McGuire, suggests the following three steps.
Step 1: Provide immediate first aid and sure the injury is not life threatening. Ask simple questions that the athlete should already know like the ABC’s or the athlete’s name.
Step 2: Figure out what the injury is, and who needs to be contacted to accommodate the injured player.
Step 3: Treat the injury accordingly by doing whatever needs to be done to get the athlete back to playing.
“Being involved with all sport events and being a part of the team is what I like most,” said McGuire.
McGuire has been an athletic trainer for 15 years and has been working at TJC for five. He is the first to respond to any injury at all sporting events.
“It depends on the injury. The sport does not really matter,” said McGuire, “You do, however, bring the different things that you need for certain sports.”
Football is a rougher sport than swimming. There are things the athletic trainers need to bring to a swim meet that they would not need to bring to a football game. Typical injuries in football are: concussions, broken bones, and life- threatening injuries, it a pretty dangerous sport. Swimming, however, usually has injuries like cramps and mild sprains.
“The best game there is, is a game in which you can sit and watch and there are absolutely no injuries,” said McGuire.
Head Men’s Basketball Manager, Ricky Williams has a slightly different approach to treating injuries.
“It depends on the situation and the type of injury [to] what steps need to be taken and what needs to be done when a player gets injured,” said Williams. “The sport does not matter when it comes to accommodating an injured player on the field or court.”
The steps taken by Williams for an injured basketball player are as follows.
Step 1: Get the injured player off the court to check and see what it is wrong.
Step 2: Look to see what it is they need to do to get the athlete back on the court. If there is an injured athlete that excels more than others they will try to get them back on the court as quickly as possible.
Step 3: Make the athlete do a little bit of running to see if they can walk it off.
“My favorite part about being in this line of work is being able to work with the players,” said Williams.
