Student trainers work to keep student athletes at their best

During many sports, there are injuries that happen that need more than just a band-aid. However, Westside is able to tackle this issue with their training staff. The training room is an easy way to provide the athletes with help, and at the same time give students experience in the medical field. For senior Hailey Tierra, being a trainer has been an eye opening experience.

Though sports are a year round activity, football season tends to bring in the biggest crowd of injuries .

“During football season, things are a lot busier in there,” Tierra said. “We probably see twenty to thirty of the guys in there. Of course, we see all of the other sports, but football is probably our busiest season in there.”

Injuries the players face vary quite a bit and the treatment of each all follow a different protocol.

“Everything really depends on the type of sport. With football and soccer, we see a lot of turf toe or injuries like that,” Tierra said. “But with basketball, running and sports that are inside, we see many more leg injuries due to it being harder on the joints to run on the floor all the time. Or sports like swimming we see injuries of all sorts because they use their whole body.”

While Tierra has aspirations to go to medical school and be a pathologist, the training has been a good kick start for her. However, there are of course limits to what she is able to help with.

“Because I’m only a student athletic trainer, I’m not allowed to do certain things such as some machinery or techniques they use because they learned those when they went to school to be a certified athletic trainer,” Tierra said. “I do ice bags, a lot of taping, heat packs and a lot of injury prevention.”

As far as to the other side of the training room, it is a place sophomore athlete Michael Fishburn, along with many other athletes, are very familiar with.

Fishburn is currently on the JV football team at Westside and has been seeing the trainer for icing and shin splints.

“I probably spend close to an hour everyday after school at the trainer,” Fishburn said. “Normally icing or stretching.”

According to Fishburn, the trainers really try to benefit the athletes as much as they can. They even give them advice on staying healthy.

“They help us all a lot, they make sure we keep hydrated and stretched,” Fishburn said. “They’ve really helped with my injury.”

Fishburn feels that the low trainer to athlete ratio does not affect the successfulness of how the training room operates.

“I feel everything runs well and everyone is very good at their job and what they do,” Fishburn said.

“They only thing I would change is hopefully we can get another whirlpool at some point just so it’s not so crowded.”

The training room is a very beneficial place for students and athletes and should continue to run smoothly through Westside’s time.