hello and welcome to the scoop my name is chloe jackson otto and here with me today i have nate said black nate is one of the athletic trainers here at peters township and has been with us for a year now he works with the athletic staff to make sure our student athletes are always and tiptop shape and ready to play for our episode today he's going to share with us the schooling and training he went through to get here and the experience and his experiences on the job we're also going to get a rundown of what he and his coworkers do on a day to day basis  you choose to become an athletic trainer i originally when i graduated high school i believed that i wanted to be a physical therapist i was going to use training as my undergraduate and go on to graduate school for p t but once i got into the classes and coursework of athletic training i realized that's what i actually wanted to do so what qualities and traits do you possess that makes you believe that your you would be a good athletic trainer well i did i did pretty well in school i had an interest in the medical field as well as sports obviously you have to be interested in what you're doing talking a lot to students being able to work out puzzles because all a lot of times the diagnosis isn't clear ok so whenever you were in high school what sports did you play in high school i was on the track and cross country teams so how do you think playing sports and high school helped to you later on to become an athletic trainer while play sports that was my really first exposure into athletics training i had met the f o trainers at the school that i had gone to help me with a couple injuries and that's that's when i really started consider it as a career field he said you got injuries in high school  how often they help you like the trainers and has high school how did you like meet with them and interact i had i had sprained my ankle so obviously we were doing some treatments stuff for that little bit of rehab for that and then afterwards i stayed in touch with them once i was in school and they allowed me to shadow them to make sure that was kind of really the right direction i was going and shuttering than i even so i felt more in love with with the job so how do you think being a trainer back then was different from like being a trainer now that say i graduated from high school in two thousand and twelve so it's only been six years now ok when i was in college there was a big push for evidence based medicine which is having research to back what you're doing so i would say there's probably more research based things that we do now versus when i would have been in high school so they have like more technology and stuff how do you think the technology has changed the technologies the little different we have aid certified and then after college you have to take a sort of cation exam nationwide exam that everybody has to take so how is that exam like is it interactive do you do stuff or is it like a written test it is online you have to go i went down to pitt i believe to take mine it's computer you're in there for three hours and you just go through an answer different questions varying from anatomy to how you would treat an injury so they give you a case scenario in your to work through the say like in a year after you graduated college you came to peter's township what was the interview process like the interview process is a mine was a little stressful i had actually interviewed for multiple jobs within the same week and then started hearing back from them at different times i was very interested in this position here at peter's so it was it was a little stressful as far as that but as far as one on one is very easy very simple much like this just kind of answering questions how did they differ like the different jobs and positions mostly just schools were depending on what area you wanted to be in the theater trainers can also work in factories or different businesses so there's different positions like that as well so why do you think working in like factories and businesses how do you think that helped become trainers now as far as working what do you mean like how do you think previous experience is a job like for you what kind of jobs did you have before and how did that help you now my previous experience i worked as a cook at the gateway clipper fleet i was there for quite a while i think i start when i was sixteen just being able to go out and talk to people learning a lot about just the way to interact with people as far as responsibility doing inventory and stuff like that just kind of the day to day test now so what has your experience been like so far working here i really enjoy working at peter's  i'm very happy and lucky i think found a spot that i'm kind of content so fast out of out of school how is it like what you would have imagined is it different like what you would have imagined in this job is peter's a lot bigger than  we have plenty of tables portable tables coolers gator aid we have stimmung it's we have all just sound we have a fantastic weight room where we can do rehab in so we have quite a few seaside three athletic trainers work here how do you guys split up the tasks even me well we all like to rotate through so each f o trainer will be with a different team every day that way if one of us isn't here and not fully does and last looking for one specific person they can get treatment no matter who is here based on that it's really just a rotation we rotate through the high school in the middle school and go from there what types of stuff do you do like every day so every day we open up we'll go through our e mails respond to parents if they have any questions keep up with coaches check in with the athletic directors and then we kind of wait for students to come in from there will go into prepping your body for practice whether it's stretching heating up leading them through warm ups taping and then depending on what our athletic said was like whether we have practices or games that's a little different and you said you worked with the other coaches how do you guys i correspond with the  directors and coaches of all the other teams and work well together to get stuff done well our biggest thing is our athletic director so though they released the schedule to us and to the coaches but after that it's more of a coronation between the three of us e mails phone calls just making sure everybody's down and getting the medical coverage they need and then updating them as far as injuries go who can play who's kind of being held back a little bit and who's good to go so what types are when what seasons are the busiest for you i would probably close between fall and spring to be honest fall we have a lot of athletes inspire in the spring we have a lot of athletes in different areas so we're not all at the high school some are in peter's would some are up at p v some are here at the high school some at the middle school so that's that's kind of our stretch between the three of us and so why do you believe that some are busier than others why some seasons are busier than others just the sheer number of sports played the number of athletes involved you know you look at a football team that has quite a number of kids versus just a you know a baseball team that has quite quite few or teams are quite few are athletes so it's really just depend on the sport and what's required for each for each game ok so like whenever you're and you do you guys go to a lot of games like do you travel to games what's that experience like for you we travel so we only travel during the playoffs but we are here for every home game and we try to be around for ever practice as far as traveling goes that i think that's fun i got to travel with our boys lacrosse team last year when they went to with us and that was that was a big difference just to see them you know how they develop on the road  and making sure you know you don't always have the supplies you need on the road so you have to kind of adapt and get everybody home before you can really take care of that so whenever you're in a game and somebody comes to you with like an injury how do you history if they ever heard of before you look at it see if it looks bruised if anything's out of place if it looks well and then you're going to look at their range of motion how well they can move their pain levels their strength and then you kind of from there determine whether or not they are good to go right back in or if you need a second look and that's when you pull them from the game to really get deeper in that evaluation when you know it's time to like go to the doctor it's that serious like how do you judge that  well like most things that the little bit of an art takes a little bit of experience some things you know you know right away if you see say a broken collarbone and it's sticking up obviously that's a medical situation  far as something like an ankle sprain i like to give something like that at least twenty four hours to kind of develop and see where they are a lot of times when an injury first happens it seems a lot worse than it actually is so i like to give my athletes time before we can judge the severity of the injury and whether or not further medical assistance is needed or if we can treat it in house in the school so what type of injuries are most commonly associated with what sports like are there more prevalent injuries and different sports than others yes the the most common one we deal with is probably ankle sprains with concussions to probably being close tie as far as the sport to sport and now you're going to have more shoulder injuries or upper body injuries in something like swimming th you are going to say in basketball so like swimming and baseball would have shorter stuff soccer you tend to have more knee and ankle stuff just depending on whether it's an upper body lower body support that's just the nature of it so whenever you do it like i played soccer i know a lot of girls on my team got hurt what do you say that like how do you deal with a players that really just want to want to get back into the game and just don't want to ever stop that one's rough you have to explain to them you know sometimes if you really think it's in their best interests to pull them from the game then you have to explain that you know there's a risk of them going back and they can make their injury a lot worse and they will be out for longer so you have to persuade people into to realizing that the season is kind of more important than just one game other than that you know if it's something that they can go on then you know you've explained to them the risks you contact you you talk to coaches about you know what can happen if this continues play  that kind of has the biggest impact i believe this far as not only sports but academically you can find challenges with your schoolwork with a concussion whereas you know if it is something like a broken arm  know you can't play your sport but your education won't lock so i think that's the biggest impacting injury how do you guys accommodate to concussions and such in school how do you work with the nurses and everyone to make sure those players are back to their normal state after injuries but once we suspect enough we do have a concussion whether despite their displaying symptoms or you know they just seem a little off we will send them to a physician first to confirm the diagnosis after that we will contact our nurse and try to get the accommodation process underway that way it's kind of a smooth transition for one of the student at the parents as well understanding you know that they're getting care not only from the sports side of it for from the school side of it as well so like with other injuries such as like have well first off have you what is the most probably influential or biggest injury that you've ever seen playing the most influential i think i have to answer the most influential injury would have been when i was still in school i had an athlete who was had a bulging disc in his back so yeah he was having trouble just sitting sitting through a classroom it was really affecting his  education so i was able to work with that awfully and do some exercises to try to get that injury to calm down to relieve some of his pain and i think after the first day that we went through the exercises he was so pain free and he was so happy to be pain because he had been pain free in a long time that he he jumped up and give me write me a big bear hug which is which is nice because you it was immediate you can immediately see the benefits of the work that we did so that was probably the most influential the nastiest or or gross injury i've seen you know you know those are kind of ties so you see things that are kind of gross looking as far as like a broken arm where the arm is kind of shaped funny bloody injuries those are always scarier than they tend actually here you're looking them they tend to actually be a lot of times you get them cleaned up and you realize you know the gash is only this big but yeah it would be the biggest injuries i've seen how d extend a lot and he said he's going down and then up into his play so that injury as far as him developing it it can be anything from genetics to strength to maybe his form depending on what he's doing so whenever you encounter those markers and areas like a lots happening how do you handle all of that like that fast paced like it's kind of funny you don't think i don't really think about it i don't necessarily get  queasy i think in this sport you have to be somebody who doesn't get or in this job you have to be someone who doesn't get queasy yeah because you never know what's going to what's going to happen you never know what you end up looking at as far as handling it you know you kind of just when you're on the field and you see blood or you see something looking funky you kind of just take each problem you know walk them through each problem so you trying to get them to calm down first you take a good look at the injury and kind of figure out what you're dealing with and you just solve each problem as they come on one on one every once you were in school how did they train you for those instances like if you were someone that was kind of queasy how do you think they would help you well my in my experience our first week of classes we watched a lot of injury you tube videos actually the very first day of class we watched quite a famous injury was a hockey goalie who had gotten cut with the skate and you see the effort trying to run out on the ice and slide through you know some blood and gore and you know kind of put gaza on and the teacher stopped the video and said if you're not willing to do that for your then you might not be in the right in the right major and that they we actually had two or three kids pass out yeah you know they hadn't realized just quite what they were getting into so how whenever you come to a player like their well being it's like kind of in your hands how do you handle that responsibility where you have to just you you know you have to realize it's somebody's kid you not only is it is it an athlete who wants to continue to play you know it's it's at the high school level you guys are kids you know you've got you've got to make sure that you are acting responsibly at all times and really looking for out for their well being whether it's you know pulling somebody from the game when they're not quite you know when they're a little reluctant when it's in their best interest you know you kind of have to take that responsibility and almost be a bad guy a little bit but that's just part of you know acting responsibly and kind of handling the pressure so how do you have like deal with the parents that kind of like want their kids to just keep going back and pushing like how do you deal with that that can be a little difficult sometimes as far as dealing with it you know you really just have to educate the parents and coaches as well that can be sometimes a problem so educate them as much as can about what exactly is going on you know whether it's the anatomy to how the injury works what kind of limits they're going to experience and then you explain the risks the risks of what happens if that athlete continues to places if it's you know say somebody has a sprained a c l right that's a big injury that you hear all the time with a spring d c l you know you continue to play you run the risk of tearing it completely so something that goes from being a break turns into a surgical situation where they're out for months so you can have to explain the reward versus the risk of death when it comes to parents coaches and even the athletes so why do you think it's so bad that children sometimes go back to early like what are the downsides of like getting back into it again too early while getting back into a game too early like i said can increase the risk for more injury you're not going to you're probably not going to play your best so at that point you question whether or not your performance is even worth anything not to the team per se but just how well can you actually play if you can't perform you know if you're being held back by an injury it does there's the reward of the game where the wrist of further being easier especially with big teams you have you have subs that you know you can you can some people out when needed so somebody needs you know three days to a week off to kind of recuperate and work out some soreness that's a lot easier to get somebody else to jump in as for you know compared to an individual sport you know say something like tennis where you have your match and you're the only one that can play you know that there's no sub so they're more likely i think to want to jump back in rather than a team sport where you kind of have depth ok so i know first ocker sometimes we get i thought of trainers coming in and just telling us about like how the nutrition all that stuff why do you think that's beneficial to players to hear all that stuff well the big thing reduce the risk of injuries as far as like dehydration you know if you're say you're a football player and you're and you're trying to get bigger if you're not eating right you know you're not going to get bigger four hours nutrition after the activities so nutrition is huge huge in sports what sport do you find nutrition to be most like a problem and that is a good  question historically i think across the board you tend to find nutrition issues more say in like a general steak area or in wrestling things really have to make weight body image tends to be a big one in sports like wrestling gymnastics swimming so that's that tends to be where you can find some issues as far as nutrition people wanting to look rather they want to look right  end their uniform or you know they're just not realizing how much they're actually doing and not getting enough so how difficult for you to go to like a sport like football where it's kind of like more contact and physical sport like gymnastics  thing like how is it difficult for you to go back and forth and treating injuries there well you really just have to look at each injury needs athlete on an individual basis you know i mean you look at you know not only the sport you kind of educat yourself a little better on what's likely to happen but what's likely to happen usually is what actually ends up happening so you tend to just for me i look at each fleet individually rather than you know sport score so like whenever you're in a game sometimes you gotta like run out to help a player and how do you and your fellow coworkers stay in shape to help those players that are injured you know you try to take care of yourself a little bit can you work out as far as you know on the job it happens enough unfortunately that you kind of just get used to carrying you know we've got this big kids who are carrying coolers it's just kind of all part of it you get used to hauling stuff around and running around trying to keep up with high school it can get pretty fast i think all right well looks like that's all the time we have for today we really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to join us today for this set of the scope today we discussed qualifications for being an athletic trainer what happens on the job and how the trainers work with each other every day to make each student athlete feel safe and healthy whether that's on the field or in the walk arounds i want to thank the media department of community television for making this possible and i thank you for joining us make sure to tune i