Certified Athletic Trainers and Student Workers
Katie Elser
Limping into the athletic training room, the first thing one notices is a strong smell of Bio-Freeze massage lotion. Aside from the pungent smells, common sights include: Alice making baseball players cry during massages, Darin talking soccer while setting up a player for ice and electrical stimulation, and Alise assessing a swollen and disfigured joint.
The new students are stuck folding towels and switching the laundry, while more experienced students are taking injury histories and coming up with treatment plans. From an outsiders point of view it seems like complete chaos, with as many as four separate teams being worked on at any given point. To trained eyes it’s still chaos, but controlled.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction – periods of rare silence are spent grading papers and studying for evaluations. This is the life inside the Vanguard Athletic Training Education Program.
THE ATC’s:
VU has three full-time, Athletic Trainers Certified (ATC’s) on campus. Darin Voigt, Alise Juanes, and Alice Loebsack have all received their Masters degrees in the Kinesiology field.
These three work together to run the Athletic Training Room, supervise the student trainers, cover athletic practices & games, and also work as professors in the Kinesiology program.
Voigt, Juanes, and Loebsack are known to go above and beyond the structure of a typical nine-to-five work day and devote much of their time and energy into making this program run with excellence. On game days, it is not uncommon for the trainers to put in a 12-16 hour work day—only to come right back the next morning to teach an early class.
“The staff really makes the program what it is. Without them, the program would definitely not be as successful” junior Colby McKamey said of the training program.
THE ATR:
The Athletic Training Room (ATR) is a common stop for the majority of athletes at VU. From common services of taping ankles and icing muscles to more intense treatments for serious muscular-skeletal injuries, the ATR is a critical aspect of the athletics’ program.
As the ATR is the treatment center for all student athletes, it also serves as the Wellness Center for everyone else on campus. Located on the first floor of the gym in the northwest corner, all orthopedic, skeletal and muscular injuries can be evaluated and often treated immediately, while the trainers also give over-the-counter medications for small ailments such as the common cold.
While they cannot perform all the same services a hospital can offer, when a student is unsure about an injury or illness, he or she can often save time and money by stopping in the ATR first for a quick evaluation.
THE ATEP STUDENTS:
Working alongside the trainers in the ATR and at all home sporting events is a team of students in the Athletic Training Education Program (ATEP). These students are all working towards careers in kinesiology and in addition to their classes each ATEP student, depending on year, will spend 10-15 hours a week working in the ATR. This work provides the students with a hands-on educational experience that could not be attained solely through class lectures.
“You can really take everything you learn in class and use it that same day,” Juanes said.
In addition to the great experience these students receive in the ATR, each student is also required to spend time working in other environments outside of VU. One semester is spent working with a contact sport such as football at another school, while another semester must be spent ‘interning’ with a local physical therapy clinic.
The Athletic Training Program is made up of an incredible staff of trainers and students who are dedicated and passionate. They are here to serve all of us—you don’t need an athletic excuse to seek the help of the athletic trainers.
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