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Athletic trainers put in long hours covering practices, doing rehabilitation and evaluations in the athletic training facility, and attending athletic contests. An athletic trainer is the only person, other than the athletic director, who works with all of the different athletes and coaches from all of the sports at your school. Therefore, he or she must be highly competent, skilled, and educated in order to take care of the injuries and meet the needs of very diverse athletes.

Athletic trainers are one of the most important cogs in the wheel of athletics as they have to make important decisions regarding the well-being of our student-athletes. Here at North Hills High School in Pittsburgh, there are three areas we have identified that keep our athletic trainers energized about their job and profession.

Method 1: Preparing Future Athletic Trainers
We have an affiliation with nearby Duquesne University, where the athletic training education program has been ranked as one of the top in the country. The Rangos School of Health Sciences assigns athletic training students to our athletic trainers in partnerships that are much like student-teacher assignments. In these partnerships, our athletic trainers are able to impart their knowledge and share their skills with the athletic training students.

To compensate them for their work as clinical educators, the athletic trainers are given adjunct appointments at the university, gain access to all of the services and facilities open to university faculty, and are offered opportunities to gain Continuing Education Units (CEUs) through both special programming and regular classes. Eric Cardwell, Athletic Trainer at North Hills, says, “My greatest motivation is to be able to provide students with the best and most current information possible.”

Method 2: Providing Educational Opportunities
Athletic trainers are required to gain CEUs to maintain their national and state certifications, and to keep them current in their practice. To assist with this requirement, our school maintains a relationship with the Sports Medicine Department at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. There, athletic trainers are offered weekly in-service sessions conducted by the different divisions within the hospital such as orthopedic surgeons, athletic trainer supervisors, and physical therapists.

The athletic trainers are also given opportunities to attend conventions, conferences, and seminars that are held on the national, state, and local levels, all of which offer continuing education opportunities. Additionally, they are given free access to the hospital’s medical library to research specific cases. Our school also has benefited from the athletic training staff receiving equipment, supplies, and materials provided free of charge by the hospital.

Method 3: On-Site Initiatives
We are fortunate here at North Hills to have two full-time athletic trainers who complement each other well. Each has strengths we rely on to keep our athletic training program solid, and both individuals are motivated to seek ways to improve our current procedures and implement new and better programs. Here are a few examples of how they have done so:

• Flexibility in Scheduling: We allow the athletic trainers to set their own schedules. They know which events need coverage, and together they are able to work out flexible schedules before the start of each sports season.

• Program Initiation: A few years ago, one of our athletic trainers thought that while we speak of preventative maintenance in sport, we were not doing enough. He wondered whether the implementation of a speed and agility program could enhance our athletes' performance while reducing the risk of injury. The speed and agility program he then implemented has become an integral part of our teams' strength and conditioning training and has indeed improved our athletes’ performance.

Our athletic trainers collaborated to create an active warmup routine for the athletes, and demonstrated the routine at our preseason coaches meeting. Many of our coaches favored this method over their traditional warmups, and were also impressed with the sequential training it offered.

• Promoting Safe Practices: One of our athletic trainers developed a program for the emergency management of injuries, such as concussions. She put the information on a card and asked the coaches to carry the card in their medical kits. We also include the information on our Web site (www.nhsports.org) along with tips from our athletic trainers for training in the heat.

The athletic trainers are valuable and critical components to the success of our Athletic Department as well as the health and well being of our student-athletes. At North Hills, the athletic trainers know just how important they are to our athletes, coaches, and administrators. "There is a high level of trust, appreciation, and acceptance between the athletic department and the athletic training staff at North Hills," says Cardwell. "It definitely keeps me interested and motivated as an athletic trainer."

Dan Cardone is Athletic Director at North Hills High School in Pittsburgh, Pa. He is a frequent contributor toAthletic Management. Paula Sammarone Turocy is Department Chair, Associate Professor, and Rangos Rizakus Endowed Chair for Health Sciences and Ethics at Duquesne University.