Here’s a summer invitation from Spalding University: Get some training on athletic training.
If you’re a teenage student who contributes to the athletic training staff of your high school’s sports teams, or if you’re just interested in learning about athletic training, an upcoming Spalding skills camp figures to be right up your alley.
Spalding’s Master of Science in Athletic Training program, partnering with the Kentucky Orthopedic Rehab Team (KORT), will host its second annual High School Athletic Training and Sports Medicine Workshop on Wednesday, June 20 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Eighth-graders are also invited to participate. The cost is $30, and the deadline to register is June 15. Here is the link to sign up.
Spalding athletic training faculty member Sabrina Pletz said most of the students who attended camp last year were athletic training aides or team managers at their schools, or high school athletes, themselves, who have been hurt, gone through rehab and worked with an athletic trainer.
“People who attend the camp can definitely increase their skills,” Pletz said. “Taping is always something that students can do on the sideline at their high school. Basic first aid, assisting with spine boarding, splinting, these are all things they can learn and enhance their skills and take back with them if they’re helping out at their high school, or even middle school.”
The camp will include an overview of athletic training and demonstrations of taping, bracing, making splints, using a backboard and performing emergency procedures. Campers will also be introduced to some modalities and therapy devices such as an ultrasound machine, and they’ll learn some rehab techniques.
The Spalding athletic department’s strength and conditioning coach, Sarah Clinton, will meet with campers and explain the kind of work she does with athletes.
And the camp will conclude with the Athletic Trainer Olympics – a fun competition of relay races to test the campers’ skills.
The camp will start and finish at Spalding’s Columbia Gym, 824 S. Fourth St., which houses the university’s varsity basketball and volleyball gym upstairs and the athletic training room, fitness center and athletic department offices in the lower level.
There will also be a stop by Spalding’s athletic training lab in the Kosair Charities College of Health and Natural Sciences building., 901 S. Third St.
This is the first year Spalding and KORT, which employs many of the athletic trainers who work at area high schools, have partnered on the camp, and Pletz said she’s excited to have the KORT athletic trainers on hand to share their expertise.
The Spalding and KORT athletic trainers, such as Kevin Brown, who works with the Louisville Ballet, will explain the many kinds of job settings in which athletic trainers can work.
“There are military settings, industrial settings,” Pletz said, noting that Spalding has a couple graduates who are now ATs at GE. “It’s not always just taping ankles on the sideline. There is so much you can do. The settings are expanding by leaps and bounds.”
To the students who attend the camp and might want to make athletic training their profession, keep Spalding in mind for college. Spalding’s master’s in athletic training program was the first accredited athletic training graduate program in the state. And if you attend Spalding as an undergrad, you can begin taking courses toward your master’s during your senior year before you graduate. If you do it successfully, once you get your bachelor’s degree in natural science, you’ll need only one more year to get your master’s in athletic training.
“You can finish with a bachelor’s and a master’s in five years,” Pletz said. “That’s a big plus.”
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