Injuries are a common occurrence in high school sports whether it be spraining your ankle or breaking your leg. When a student athlete gets injured it also takes a toll on their teammates because it brings them down when they see a friend get injured. Junior Turner Bolton was injured this year during his football season when he broke his clavicle. Senior Logan Jergenson said that Turner’s injury affected the team because Bolton was one of their key players and he was out for the season. On top of that this year, the football team already had lower numbers, so losing players to injuries caused that number to get lower. Bolton said that when the team has fewer players it can also make injuries more common because you are playing on the field longer and are more prone to an injury.
Hannah Mathias is another student athlete who was injured playing for the school. She dislocated her knee two times playing soccer her sophomore year and was out for the entire season. Mathias said that “Missing my sophomore season put me back a lot because I missed a whole year of soccer in which my teammates got to keep improving while I couldn’t.” However, Mathias said that this injury made her more motivated to play soccer for her junior and senior seasons, because if she ever felt unmotivated to play she would think back to her sophomore self who would have just loved to be able to go to practice and improve.
For the past few years the school has not had an Athletic Trainer who helps students when injured, so that job has been put onto the coaches who are not are not completely trained in that area. The coaches can help with some things because they are CPR and First Aid trained, but they don’t have as much knowledge on the subject as an athletic trainer would.
Athletic Director Scott Rosberg said that “Us coaches have a basic but limited understanding of injuries. When you have a trainer, your peace of mind is so much greater because you know you have someone out there who can help out with any injury.”
Park High is actively looking for an Athletic Trainer for the school because student and athlete safety is a huge concern, Rosberg stated. Rosberg said that earlier this year he talked to Livingston Health Care to see if they could help get a trainer, but that the hospital doesn’t have employees who are trained in that area right now to assist the school. At the moment the school has EMTs who come to the games to help out, but they would love to get an athletic trainer soon.