Behind the Scenes: Trainer Tim Glover helps stretch out Makenzi Peterson, a junior on the soft­ball team. Trainers are the peo­ple behind the scenes that help Bulldog ath­letes stay healthy. Photo By: Michael Fleming | Web Editor

The front page of the next day’s local sports sec­tion is pasted with pho­tos of the point guard who nailed the game-winning shot. But it’s an unlikely sight to see the team lift­ing the trainer on their shoul­ders after they’ve helped the star run­ning back rehab a bru­tal knee injury.

The atten­tion the star ath­letes get for win­ning the games is fre­quent, but it’s rare see the peo­ple who help behind the scenes who play into an athlete’s suc­cess. That is the life of an ath­letic trainer.

Trainers help play­ers recover from injuries, help pre­vent injuries and keep them­selves in shape for com­pe­ti­tion. But never does the post-game analy­sis show ded­i­cate a seg­ment of air­time to how vital the recov­ery plan that the trainer set-up for the run­ning back helped get him back in time for the big game.

“Working as a trainer can be some of the most stren­u­ous and stress­ful work that goes on in col­lege ath­let­ics,” said Dave Lucey, who serves as the head ath­letic trainer for Ferris ath­let­ics. “But you’ve got to remem­ber that these ath­letes don’t want to have to see us. We’re like the grim reaper.”

When look­ing at the Ferris ath­let­ics pro­gram, lit­tle atten­tion is paid to the train­ing staff and the work the indi­vid­u­als put in to keep the Ferris ath­letic teams healthy. But as Ferris has only three full-time ath­letic train­ers for all of the ath­letic teams at Ferris, stu­dent train­ers are a vital cog in the ath­let­ics machine for the Bulldogs.

“You can’t take things per­sonal in this job,” said Jillian Erickson, who has worked as a stu­dent trainer for the past two years. “You have to real­ize that the ath­letes are going through a hard time…but it’s neat to see them go through the process of get­ting healthy and to know that you are part of that.”

It’s a dif­fi­cult job to work as a stu­dent trainer in an ath­let­ics pro­gram at Ferris for the stu­dents who try to jug­gle the job, their social life and their school work. On top of that, these stu­dents feel the work that they do can be stereo­typed at times.

“We do more than just hand the ath­letes bot­tles of water,” joked Justin Cooper, a pre-med stu­dent. “We have to work with all of the sports teams and it can be pretty demand­ing at times and I think peo­ple some­times don’t real­ize this.”

From tak­ing care of open wounds to tap­ing up ankles, these stu­dents have to be multi-faceted with their skills as they do not have the lux­ury of work­ing as a trainer for just one sport, like many major Division I schools do with their stu­dent athletes.

The stu­dent train­ers must deal with a vari­ety of sports injuries. Rehabbing a foot­ball player’s sprained ankle, get­ting a run­ner for track in shape for the next meet and keep­ing a bas­ket­ball player from get­ting worn down in the mid­dle of the sea­son are some of the var­i­ous tasks the stu­dents have to do and there is a great deal of respon­si­bil­ity placed on these students.

“These kids are the life­line of this ath­letic pro­gram,” said Lucey. “I have to trust that they will be at a soc­cer prac­tice or a foot­ball game when I’m not going to be there.”

Lucey says that while he usu­ally gets a decent amount of fresh­men to add to the staff in a given year, that num­ber will dwin­dle down to five or six stu­dents that stick around after the train­ing period, which takes a year to complete.

One of the skills that Lucey looks for his stu­dent train­ers to excel at is to be able to com­mu­ni­cate, not only with the ath­letic teams, but with each other.

“Teamwork and com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the biggest aspect of this job,” said Erickson. “We have to be able to work well with each other and make sure every­one is on the same page.”

But for as much work that goes into the job and the lack of atten­tion paid to their work, these stu­dents know their efforts are appreciated.

“The inter­ac­tion is nice because we don’t get respect from the ath­letes at times, but even a ‘thank you’ for get­ting a bag of ice is nice to hear,” said Ali Wagner, who is study­ing health care admin­is­tra­tion at Ferris. “It’s bet­ter than sit­ting at a desk and not get­ting to see your boss and you get to see the athlete’s progress and we’re a part of that.” n

Related Posts

No related posts.