Just three years ago, East Central High School had a big, talented defensive tackle with a sore knee.
The young man would play as hard as he could for two or three plays, then he’d limp to the sideline to massage his cartilage back into place. Then he’d do it all over again, back and forth, in and out, always in pain, never quite right.
“That’s a damn shame,” Tulsa Public Schools athletic director Gil Cloud said. “We’ve got a kid that has to go home every night with a knee brace on and know he’s not gonna go to the doctor because his family can’t afford the operation.”
At TPS, cases like that may soon be a thing of the past.
During the Tulsa Sports Commission’s quarterly sports forum at the Union Multipurpose Activity Center on Tuesday, Cloud revealed that TPS soon will add three athletic trainers to help the district’s 3,500 student-athletes return appropriately to good health.
The goal is to get three new athletic trainers in place during the 2015-16 school year. Within two years, Cloud wants to have 10 athletic trainers in all, one for each TPS high school and one overseeing what eventually will be a TPS wellness center. Junior high student-athletes also would have access to a trained medical professionals who can diagnose, treat and rehabilitate their sports injuries.
Pie in the sky? Not this time, said TPS coordinator of sports medicine Steve Friebus.
“We’re trying to get different foundations throughout the community to donate,” Friebus said. “Kaiser, Williams, whoever. Anybody that says, ‘You know what? I want to partner with Tulsa, and help make Tulsa a better place to live.’ We’re talking about Tulsa Public Schools, but I’m saying Tulsa.”
Said Cloud, “We’re gonna do i.”
Friebus said he has partnered with Dr. Lamont Cavanagh of OU-Tulsa and Dr. Gerard Clancy of the TU College of Health Sciences to draft proposals for what would begin as a three-year commitment and ultimately would change the face of healthcare for TPS student-athletes and their families.
“Most of them, they don’t see a doctor. They don’t have a family physician,” Friebus said. “The only time they go to one is at these mass, pre-participation physicals.
“They would know the person’s there all day long, and those kids could be examined and get referrals. That athletic trainer can act like a gatekeeper — put them in the right direction and help them navigate the medical world.”
Friebus stressed that just having access to an emergency room or a clinic or a family pediatrician is not necessarily what’s best for an athlete.
“The typical kid goes to a pediatrician with knee pain, the pediatrician says, ‘Take 10 days off and come back,’” Friebus said. “And sometimes, because of the parents’ financial situation — ‘Well, I don’t get paid until the end of the month; I don’t have health insurance’ — so the kid could be out 3-4 weeks for a simple ankle sprain, when he could have been back in a week-and-a-half (with free access to an athletic trainer on campus). So that’s not fair.”
Friebus said there’s no timetable yet on the state-of-the-art wellness center. But think what such a facility could mean someday to TPS student-athletes and their families.
“If a kid sprains his or her ankle, the little stuff, short-term, he or she can be taken care of right there at their school,” Friebus said. “But if a kid was … gonna have knee surgery, out six months, they would have this wellness center they could go to before school or after school if their schedule allows, or if they have an open period — and then they can get that long-term rehab, and there would be doctors, nurses, diagnostic equipment, hydrotherapy, the whole bit. And it’s right there.”
Oklahoma is tied for 49th nationally with just 28 percent coverage of athletic trainers at public schools. If TPS pulls this off, that number, finally, will change.
“I want this to be a model for the country to improve the wellness of kids throughout,” Friebus said.
Cloud said recent state mandates for coaches to learn how to deal with concussions, heat illnesses and sudden cardiac arrest have put a strain on the coaches themselves, but he guesses the next logical step will be to legislate athletic trainers into school districts.
“These unfunded mandates,” Cloud said, “are really something.”
“But,” Friebus said, “if we can be ahead of the curve when they do the mandate and we already have in place a plan to pay for it, then it could be the model that other school districts could follow.”
ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
http://www.tulsaworld.com/blogs/sports/highschools/john-e-hoover-great-news-tps-will-add-athletic-trainers/article_a2a98a0f-750b-5b44-9f88-88f72f72f35b.html