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Athletic Trainers provide ‘really invaluable’ services to football teams

Football, just like any sport, has many ingredients that go into having a successful season.

Through the strenuous summer schedules, the time spent studying film and playbooks, lifting and doing conditioning work, there often is a group of people who go unnoticed, whose work doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves.

That group is athletic trainers.

Trainers often are required to be at all practices and games during the season. However, high school trainers are not just single-sport trainers, also tending to each of the other school sports teams year-round.

“I wouldn’t trade our trainers for anyone else around,” St. Charles East football coach Bryce Farquhar said. “I think if you ask anyone at East, they’ll say we have the best trainers around. They take pride in what they do, they’re great people and they do everything in their power to make sure the kids stay healthy and can compete in these sports.”

“You can’t put a price tag on how much they do for us,” St. Charles North coach Rob Pomazak said. “The hours they put in, people don’t see, but they play just as big a part as any. It’s really invaluable.”

Pomazak was just one of many coaches who called his own athletic trainers, which for North are Shelby Bernard and Stacey Bethune, the best in the area.

There’s no question their service and amount of work is appreciated by players and coaches, and even the athletic directors.

Fans watching the games on Friday nights don’t necessarily see what those who observe the trainers each day provide and the work that goes into keeping athletes healthy.

It varies by school, but some trainers outdo the coaches in seniority and some trainers are newer to programs with experienced, well-rounded coaches.

For Geneva trainer Bill Durand and coach Rob Wicinski, the 14 years they have spent together in the Vikings program have helped them learn quite a bit about each other.

“We were just talking [on the first day of practices],” Wicinski said. “I started going, ‘Bill, you got this?’ He goes, ‘Yeah.’ ‘Bill, you got that?’ ‘Yeah, I got that.’ It’s like, I think 14 years, he kind of figures me out. He knows what I need.”

But Durand saw a more important advantage to not only having a business relationship, but also a friendship with the coaches.

“Sometimes you aren’t always going to tell the coaches news they want to hear,” Durand said. “We have a friendship that has developed into the point where I don’t have to worry about him taking my advice. He may not like it, but he’ll never question what I say.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
http://www.kcchronicle.com/2015/08/19/trainers-provide-really-invaluable-services-to-football-teams/a51xu8e/