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Full-time athletic trainers receive rave reviews at California schools

Athletic trainer Josh Masmela attended to a Hart High football player with a broken nose, then rushed off to help with a baseball injury, then made his way to treat a softball player.

“Johnny-on-the-spot” is the way Hart Principal Dr. Collyn Nielsen refers to Masmela and the partnership between the William S. Hart Union High School District and Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital, which has placed a full-time certified athletic trainer on each of the district’s six high school campuses.

At the conclusion of its first semester, the program has received rave reviews from administrators and coaches alike.

“It’s just what we had hoped it would be,” said Greg Lee, the district’s director of human resources and equity services.

The program was sparked, in part, by 2015 legislation mandating that a player suspected of having a concussion be cleared by a licensed health-care provider before returning to play.

The district’s trainers, though, have dealt with a wide range of injuries, from sprained ankles to broken bones.

Lee recently received a letter from a parent who was impressed with how quickly a trainer responded at football practice to his son’s chipped tooth.

“We’re getting a lot of appreciation from parents who are saying, ‘Wow, this is really a step up in the care our kids are getting,” Lee said.

Nielsen seconded that perspective.

“It’s been a real success at Hart High School, and from what I’ve heard, across the district,” Nielsen said.

At Hart, Masmela has access to a school-wide radio and a golf cart, maximizing mobility on days when the Indians host multiple sporting events.

In the case of more than one event at West Ranch, athletic trainer Kylie Trammell goes to the one most likely to see injury, a track meet, for instance. Some days she attended more than one game, others she traveled with the baseball team as it made a deep postseason run.

“It’s been fantastic,” said West Ranch Athletic Director Cassandra Perez. “Kylie has been amazing. She is completely willing to work with all our coaches and is very flexible with her schedule so she can be at different practices and games.”

Masmela worked afternoons and evenings at Hart during the spring, Nielsen said, but he’ll work 8 a.m. to 4 or 5 p.m. during the summer to accommodate the season’s sports.

One of the program’s main objectives was to relieve coaches of the pressure that comes with evaluating a player’s health status. That, said Saugus softball coach Julie Archer, has been the case.

“If there was a slight injury or anything happening, we could send them to someone with a better knowledge in that area, which was nice,” she said.

The flip side, Nielsen said, is that it can be uncomfortable for coaches to rely on someone else to make decisions about a player’s availability.

“It hasn’t been a big issue for us,” he said.

Another obstacle, Lee said, has been that some of the area’s older schools lack space specifically for the trainer. That’s “going to come along,” he said, with a goal of equitable facilities.

The heat of summer and physicality of football in the fall will provide challenges, too.

However, Lee said each trainer has worked in a football environment.

“They’re young, but they’re not truly rookies,” he said.

Lee added that while the focus has been on return-to-play protocol (aimed at safely returning a player to the athletic field), the next step for the district is to emphasize return-to-learn protocol moving into the fall.

That, he said, is to educate teachers on accommodations that may be necessary for a student coming back to school after suffering a concussion. It might include limiting the use of technology or allotting extra time to take tests.

“Those kinds of things that we kind of take for granted,” said Lee, adding that a workshop on the subject may be held in the fall with athletic administrators, counselors and health assistants in order to better serve the district’s 5,000-plus student-athletes across 17 sports.

In addition to partnering with Henry Mayo, which splits the salaries of the athletic trainers with the district, Hart teamed up with AutoNation, which pledged $40,000 a year to the program.

Jersey Mike’s Subs has provided discount cards that the schools’ teams can sell to raise money for consumables like athletic tape and ice, Lee said.

Like almost anything new, there are kinks to work out, but on the whole, the program has been widely accepted and appreciated.

“We’re still just trying to figure out how the athletic trainers can best serve all the sports,” said Derek Rusk, Canyon’s co-athletic director and girls soccer coach. “But the students that have had the opportunity to work with the trainer have had a really positive experience.”

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