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Athletic trainers help Soldiers in basic training dodge injury

Article reposted from U.S. Army
Author: Reginald Rogers

As new recruits train to become Infantrymen and Armor Soldiers, their level of pre-training fitness is oftentimes a decisive factor when it comes to their susceptibility to injury.

Some injuries, depending on their severity, can determine whether or not they even complete their training, which is why the Army has placed individual athletic trainers, who are musculoskeletal care specialists, within its training battalions at Fort Benning. The goal is to ensure that prospective Soldiers receive the best in injury prevention.

Currently 20 contracted athletic trainers serve all five of Fort Benning’s training brigades. Their inclusion has been instrumental in educating Soldiers on injury prevention, but the musculoskeletal specialists also provide treatment to injured Soldiers to reduce their recovery time.

“When trainees are being seen by [the trainers] at the battalions, instead of at the Troop Medical Clinic, and they can be properly managed, we’re saving a significant amount of time for training units,” explained Maj. John Ko, chief of physical therapy at Martin Army Community Hospital.

According to Ko, the trainers are contracted through a company to serve within the installation’s training environment, as well as at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

“Essentially, our athletic trainers are the first line to providing (musculoskeletal) care to Soldiers in training,” he said. “They’re teaming up with physical therapists at each of those locations to form (musculoskeletal) stations within the battalion stations.”

Ko pointed out that many of the injuries that are trending in the training environment include those to the lower extremities, such as knee and shin pains, and ankle sprains.

“What we really want to focus on is ensuring that we provide the right care to prospective Soldiers with hip injuries,” he said.

According to Ko, the forward musculoskeletal care program has been a part of Army medicine for quite some time. Not only does it provide musculoskeletal care, but it also collects entry data to provide real-time, actionable injury trends reporting.

“If the command group sees a pattern or trend for a particular week of training, the commander has the ability to adjust or reduce an injury-causing activity for the next training cycle, which should reduce the amount of those common injuries,” Ko explained.

Because, at the end of the day, training will always involve some risk of injury, and it’s not necessarily the health providers who can do the most to prevent injuries; it’s the leaders, the commanders and noncommissioned officers.

“As health care professionals, we educate those decision-makers so that they can make better decisions to hopefully, mitigate some of those injuries,” Ko said.

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Athletic Trainer Essential to the Rodeo

Article reposted from Dodge City Daily Globe
Author: John Zetmeir

In Doug Olle’s line of work, he would prefer a slow day in the office. Unfortunately, slow days are not very common when you are in the business of mending people who are trying to stay atop a 2,000 pound bull, or stay on your horse while lassoing cattle.

Olle is the captain of the Justin Boots sports medicine team trailer that is parked on the west end of the Roundup Rodeo grounds where the contestants stay. The sports medicine team has multiple teams that travel all around the country every year.

The group of Olle and his four volunteers do everything from taping ankles to doctoring up contestants whether it be before they get in the saddle or after they’ve been thrown to the ground.

During Tuesday night’s PRCA Extreme Bull Riding event, Olle and his staff tended to 32 people.

“This is essential for what we do,” bullfighter Nate Jestes said. “Anything we do, there are a lot of risk factors and guys are always banged up, especially at this time of the year when we’ve been going since January. To have these guys on site, to take care of our injuries right away and tell us how to recover the quickest, it’s huge for us.”

Since 1992, Olle has been apart of the sports medicine team. While he mentioned that his job could turn into hell in a blink of an eye, Olle sees it more as taking care of family members than taking care of contestants. Because of the uniqueness of the trailer’s operation, Olle is often acquainted with the same people throughout the year.

“I tell people that most husbands and wives have one to two family reunions a year, I’ve got 30,” Olle said. “It is a bond, it is a family.”

The whole sports medicine team covers 125 rodeos around the country every year. Of those 125, Olle visits 30 locations. This year is his fifth year coming to Dodge City.

“The people here are really nice,” Olle said about Dodge City. “The rodeo is really good. Everywhere I go I get to meet some pretty incredible people.”

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Lumberjack Athletic Trainer Works the Slopes

The Winter X Games is the pinnacle for winter extreme sports. For NAU Associate Athletic Trainer Brent Appel, an avid winter sports enthusiast himself, he lived out an experience for the ages recently with the opportunity to work the 2016 Winter X Games in Aspen from Jan. 28-31.

“I’ve never worked an event on that scale, so I went in with an open mind,” Appel said. “It was also my first experience working with winter sports. One of the coolest things was the opportunity to work along side a group of excellent athletic trainers and physicians who were part of our medical staff. To see how they operated in a big event like that with athletes of that caliber, that was the most exciting part for me.”

Appel, in his third year with the Northern Arizona University Sports Medicine staff, is the Lumberjack women’s basketball team’s primary athletic trainer. Originally from Iowa, Appel is a member of the National Athletic Trainers Association, Rocky Mountain Athletic Training Association and the Arizona Athletic Training Association who arrived at NAU following a year at Fort Lewis College.

Although from the Midwest, Appel frequently enjoys the outdoors including snowboarding, which made his recent opportunity one that he was eagerly anticipating.

“As a guy who grew up in Iowa who loved winter sports but didn’t have the opportunities as someone who might live in the West, (the X Games) was awesome,” Appel said. “Ever since I’ve moved out West, I’ve fallen in love with these sports more and more. To see it at that level, it gave me a higher appreciation for what these athletes can really do on skis or snowboards. It put into perspective how difficult these sports are.”

The prestigious opportunity came about by chance really. With the Arizona High School Cycling League – a club who provides kids interested in mountain biking with organized races – heading up to Flagstaff last summer, Appel – a passionate mountain biker himself – seeked out an opportunity to volunteer with the club. Through a connection made with the owner of Medicine in Motion LLC, he was then invited to work at the Winter X Games.

While at the X Games, Appel was paired up with four other athletic trainers who were assigned to the X Course. With skiers added back to the X Course this year, that created more demand for athletic trainers. Appel and his team worked the practice sessions, the qualifying rounds and the actual competition. The list of athletes included men’s and women’s skiers, men’s and women’s snowboarders, adaptive snowboarders (those with prosthetic legs or missing upper extremities) and mono skiers (paraplegics on a single ski). They were also tasked with working the Big Air Snowboard event.

“My main focus was to do a good job medically, so I didn’t want to put too much focus into who I might run into,” Appel said. “But at the same time, I definitely saw athletes that I recognized from all over the world.”

The experience of working the invite-only X Games featuring the best winter sport athletes not only from the United States, but also internationally, is one that Appel will always treasure from a personal standpoint and hopes to continue. Furthermore though, from a professional development standpoint, Appel is a better athletic trainer because of it.

“My long term goals are to continue to work with athletes in these non-traditional sports,” Appel said. “I think it’s an under-represented area in terms of health care is concerned. But that’s where we come in as athletic trainers, where we can help them excel. There’s going to be traumatic injuries, and there were some this past week, but to be immersed in these emergent situations is always good experience.”

With Appel as just one example, it is clear that Lumberjack student-athletes are in outstanding hands with our NAU Sports Medicine staff on a daily basis.

CLICK HERE FOR ORIGINAL ARTICLE

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Incarnate Word to Embed Athletic Trainers in the Military

University of the Incarnate Word officials will help the U.S. Air Force reduce injuries and related costs during basic training via a grant worth nearly $1 million.

UIW officials will work with Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland on a study called “Athletic Trainer Integration in U.S. Air Force Basic Training: Reducing Injury and Related Costs. All of the Air Force’s basic training takes place at Lackland in San Antonio.

The 30-month, $980,000 project will “embed” two certified athletic trainers within an Air Force squadron of 1,200 Trainee Airmen at Lackland. The goal of the project is to apply a sports-medicine model of patient care to Air Force basic training with the hope of reducing the military’s costs related to musculoskeletal injury.

ORIGINALA RTICLE:

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Ohio University Students prepared for performing arts

Students currently in rotation at the SHAPe Clinic, part of the School of Health Sciences and Wellness, performed extrication drills in the lighting grid of The Forum Theater, recently.

Dr. Jeff Russell led teams of undergraduate and graduate students in the simulation of safe and effective removal of injured bodies from the complex environment of a lighting grid, a maze-like structure of steel platforms, lighting equipment and power cables hanging high above the theater stage.

During the in-service, students worked together learning how to respond to emergency scenarios they might encounter in a real life situation while working in a performing arts setting. These sessions benefit students from both the SHAPe Clinic and the School of Theater.

The Clinic for Science and Health in Artistic Performance (SHAPe Clinic) is a place where injured performing artists at Ohio University can be evaluated, treated and receive health and wellness advice from licensed athletic trainers who have the specialized equipment and knowledge to treat their injuries.

This clinic, started in 2013, is a collaborative effort of the College of Fine Arts and the Division of Athletic Training in the College of Health Sciences and Professions.

“If we can get someone out of a lighting grid, we can get them out of anywhere,” said Jeff Russell, the Director of the SHAPe Clinic. The complexities of the theater architecture present unique challenges, different from those of say, a football field.
Megan Bane and Emily Griswold are both graduate students in the College of Health Sciences and athletic trainers in the SHAPe Clinic. “I was responsible for running through one of the scenarios with my students and my co-workers. It was great to be exposed to the situation and think through my actions,” said Bane, “to practice what I would do in a real life event.”  Emily Griswold said she thinks “it’s important that we practice this in the most realistic setting possible, and for me working in the theater, this is a potential risk, and something I feel much more prepared to handle.”

Russell said the event was very successful. The four undergraduate students had not been exposed previously to that type of work, so they were quite enthusiastic. “These types of in-services are essential,” said Russell, “because of the extreme difficulty of extricating someone from the grid.”

“We’re trying to strategically encourage the role of safety in every aspect of theater production” said Lowell Jacobs, a master audio and master electrician in the School of Theater, and a long time theater technician with a “vested interest in increasing safety and encouraging emergency preparedness for all theater students.”

Shelley Delaney, an associate professor of performance and Head of Performance area in the School of Theater, said this collaboration “is valued beyond measure, principally as a service that keeps the students healthy, but also because it makes them feel respected and valued.”

Russell emphasized that he knows of no comparable program like that of the SHAPe Clinic in the country, educating performing arts athletic trainers in a collaborative role in theatrical education programs like this.

“Someone from the SHAPe Clinic is backstage at every dress rehearsal and performance,” said Michael Lincoln, the director of the School of Theater. “Students leaving our program will not commonly see performing arts athletic trainers when they leave Ohio University. When our students enter the profession they will spread the message about this cutting edge program,” which he hopes will improve the professional athletic trainer role within theaters and performing arts venues.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
https://www.ohio.edu/finearts/whats-happening/news-story.cfm?newsItem=30DD84AB-5056-A81E-8DE5672107AD684A

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Indiana Performing Artists benefit from athletic training services

Athletic trainers are widely and publicly known for helping traditional sport athletes, such as football and basketball players, recover from injuries, but for more than 25 years officially, these trainers have been helping out dancers and musicians in the performing arts.

Performing arts specialization for athletic trainers started at Indiana University back in 1995 with John Schrader, associate dean for student academic affairs for the School of Public Health, after a request from the then-chair of the department of ballet, which had a crisis epidemic of injuries.

With the intensity of the fall ballet immediately turning to “The Nutcracker,” a lot of overuse conditions appeared in the dancers, Schrader said.

It was not until 1997 that Schrader expanded the program because of the demands from the dancers, which eventually grew to include contemporary dance.

The current year is a trial year to expand the athletic training performing arts program again, with Alyssa McPherson working with the Marching Hundred on game days.

McPherson, officially hired through the kinesiology department, works with ROTC, the Marching Hundred, ballerinas and contemporary dancers, as well as some other musicians who come to see her. She oversees the program as the clinical supervisor for these athletic training providing services.

“I think, if you ask some of our students – the undergraduate students will rotate through our settings, too – if you ask them, they would say they are very surprised at how similar they (the injuries) are,” she said.

Schrader said only two students are admitted into the graduate program for athletic training for the performing arts because it is more of a niche program.

Athletic trainers for dancers are available at every performance, tech week and rehearsal, as well as being available for walk-in sessions in the facilities in the ballet and dance buildings.

“As a whole, I think the athletic training community has, at this point, kind of recognized dance as being a need,” McPherson said.

“I think getting athletic trainers to realize the need amongst musicians, theater performers, opera performers, et cetera, is growing, but there still is some need for that education.”

Since the program’s beginning in 1995, a lot more is available to the students who use the athletic trainers, Schrader said.

Instead of working with the acute conditions and crisis management, which was all that could be done for the most part at the beginning, more preventive measures can be taken to prevent overuse conditions from becoming severe.

Schrader said he continues working with the performers on a volunteer basis, even though he is in an administrative position now, because he enjoys it.

“I love working with the performers,” Schrader said.

There are hopes to expand the program cautiously because of the increase of interest in this particular area. Depending upon the interest in Jacobs School of Music, there could be an increase in the program involving musicians and the Marching Hundred, if there is interest beyond the current trial period.

McPherson said she would like to have extended hours for the musicians and marchers when she is available to them as she is to the dancers.

“Hopefully we’re moving to the point where having athletic trainers isn’t a luxury, but a necessity in most places (in the performing arts),” McPherson said.

 

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/18/university-athletic-training-students-work-with-da/

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Athletic trainer’s skills land him on NASCAR pit crew

When Evan Kureczka gave up his job as an assistant athletic trainer with the Charlotte 49ers athletic department and took a position with OrthoCarolina, he was counting on working more consistent hours.

He figured weekends on the road, like he had with the 49ers baseball team, were in his rearview mirror.

Three years after that transition, Kureczka is on the road again but cars are now an important part of his life. Racecars, that is.

As of July, Kurecka is a fuel runner on the pit crew of NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick. It’s a new part-time job he has that evolved out of his position as an OrthoCarolina athletic trainer, which works with Stewart-Haas Racing.

Three days a week, Kureczka treats his teammates’ bodies and makes sure they don’t run out of gas. On race days, he’s making sure Harvick’s car doesn’t run out of gas.

“I was doing rehab with Tony Stewart’s gas man, James Keener,” said Kureczka. “One day we had some down time. We were at practice, and I actually changed some lugnuts.

“I was working on taking a tire off the car, seeing how it felt, seeing what they go through. I was treating (the pit crew members) but it was easier to understand the wear their bodies were taking and the stresses that were given off on the body.”

Kureczka, who lives in the University City’s Wellington neighborhood, asked race team members if he could join them on the road on race days to get a first hand look at how their bodies labored. The next thing he knew, he was recruited to be one of them.

A Winston-Salem native, Kureczka says he wasn’t much of a race fan growing up. He was a wrestler at Mount Tabor High. Kureczka said the first time he ever attended a race at Charlotte Motor Speedway was when his team manned a concession stand as a fundraising activity.

He enrolled at UNC Charlotte believing he would major in pre-med. But when he suffered an injury while playing pick-up basketball, the rehab he received redirected him towards athletic training.

Kureczka graduated in 2009 and took a job with the Charlotte athletic department. His primary role was serving the 49ers baseball team, which usually plays about 50 games a season with half of them on the road.

Kureczka joined the staff of OrthoCarolina, the orthopedic and physical therapy network, in 2012. He primarily cared for patients at its University-area location but he also worked with the Charlotte 49ers tennis teams through OrthoCarolina’s outreach program.

Near the end of the 2014 NASCAR season, a spot opened in the OrthoCarolina Motorsports program, an extension of its outreach program that concentrates on working with race teams. In addition to Stewart-Haas Racing, OrthoCarolina also works with notable teams such as Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing.

Joe Piette, pit crew coach for Harvick’s team, has worked in racing for 27 years. He says athletic trainers working closely with pit crews is a trend that’s grown in the last four years.

“As the pit stops get faster and as there are more competitive pit crews on pit road, everyone is looking for that competitive edge,” said Piette. “Athletic trainers are just a part of that process.”

Three days a week, Kureczka travels to the Stewart-Haas Racing shop in Kannapolis for roughly three hours. He evaluates pit crew members and provides treatments and rehab services.

Once Piette and other team members recognized Kureczka’s interest and potential for joining the pit crew, they hired him to fill an opening in early July. His first race was at Kentucky Speedway on July 11.

Kureczka’s responsibilities include helping with the exchange of gas cans during a four-tire, two-can pit stop. After the pit stop, he’s in charge of refueling the cans and getting them ready for the next break.

Once the season ends Nov. 22, Kureczka, the athletic trainer, will begin preparing the Stewart-Haas pit crews for the start of the next season. Stewart-Haas Racing has indicated to Kureczka that they want him back on the pit crew for the 2016 season.

“A couple weeks ago, they asked me if I wanted to come back,” he said. “I told them I definitely would. It’s definitely beneficial to be around the guys from a relationship standpoint and to see the injuries. It helps out during the week.”

Joe Habina is a freelance writer: joehabina@yahoo.com.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/community/lake-norman-mooresville/article38316825.html#storylink=cpy
ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/community/lake-norman-mooresville/article38316825.html
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athletic trainers eyed for Marine Corps infantry battalions

The Marine Corps wants to keep combat Marines fit and ready to roll. This week staff writer Gidget Fuentes tells you how:

Sprained ankles, busted knees, torn ligaments and backaches are no strangers to infantrymen, whether they’re downrange or training in garrison. Long humps hauling heavy gear over rough terrain can tax and sideline even the toughest grunts.

With hopes of reducing such injuries, and keeping combat Marines fit and ready to roll, the Marine Corps wants to assign professional athletic trainers to each of its infantry battalions. The proposal would be funded with $3 million from the Marine Corps’ budget request for fiscal 2013, said Navy Cmdr. Steven Parks, the medical programs officer in the Ground Training Division at Training and Education Command in Quantico, Va. He outlined the plan in May during the Navy-Marine Corps Combat Operational Stress Control conference here in San Diego.

The plan is part of a Corpswide effort to prevent injuries and speed recovery of injured personnel assigned to the operating forces. It follows a model of looking at Marines as professional athletes, and that means keeping them healthy, rehabbing them from injuries and getting them fit for duty with the help of professionals who are skilled in strength and conditioning, as well as injury prevention.

It’s a hallmark of the new Marine Total Fitness concept, officials said.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/pt365/2012/06/21/professional-athletic-trainers-eyed-for-marine-corps-infantry-battalions/32134627/

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Employers turn to athletic trainers to keep work teams off the disabled list

Sophisticated employers are implementing programs to address workers’ physical ailments before they become costly injuries.

“We’re at work sometimes more than we’re at home,” said Maria Henderson, senior director of workforce health at Pacific Gas & Electric Co. in San Francisco. If employers don’t promote preventive care and offer resources to workers, “it’s not going to happen.”

PG&E is among companies using what are known as industrial athlete programs to increase employee engagement and reduce workers compensation and group medical costs and absenteeism.

The idea has been around more than 10 years, but experts say only a small percentage of employers have such a program in place.

Like athletes, many workers put their bodies through tremendous stress, said Marty Matney, program manager and head athletic trainer at Work-Fit L.L.C. The Everett, Washington-based company manages injury prevention, on-site fitness and other programs for employers as part of Agility Health L.L.C.

While “athletes may subject their bodies to maximum exertion for about two to three hours a day,” employees might be at it for 10 hours, he said.

Often led by athletic trainers, industrial athlete programs target at-risk workers and can include workstation analysis, stretching and conditioning, resistance training, massage therapy and first aid, he said.

Participating workers visit a trainer at the first sign of discomfort, and the trainer decides whether he or she can handle the problem or send the worker to a physician, Mr. Matney said.

“The program is intended to “interrupt that discomfort and injury cycle” so workers don’t have to have surgery, miss work or go out on disability, Ms. Henderson said.

The goal is to keep injuries from “becoming debilitating to the team — whether it’s the football team or the company,” Mr. Matney said.

PG&E is rolling out its program to workers in physically demanding roles, regardless of whether the discomfort is occupational or nonoccupational.

For example, a worker may twist their ankle playing softball, Mr. Matney said.

“Let’s say they climb up and down ladders all day long with a bad ankle. If they fall off,” it becomes an occupational injury, he said.

The high cost of musculoskeletal disorders — between workers comp, safety incidents, group health, absenteeism and productivity losses — led PG&E to implement a program, Ms. Henderson said.

“In any one year, we’re spending over $100 million on musculoskeletal (disorders), and that’s conservative,” Ms. Henderson said.

“(Musculoskeletal) is a tough category for people to get their arms around,” said Denise Fleury, Orange, California-based senior vice president of disability and absence management at Sedgwick Claims Management Services Inc. Many employers know how to work with employees with diabetes or a broken leg, but making sure people are “physically fit and have the strength and flexibility they need to do their work is more challenging.” A frequent cause of injuries is workers who are “not really physically fit enough to do their jobs.”

“Now, many employers are saying to employees, at the first sign of a strain or a problem during any part of your job, we want you to let us know and we’ll have someone take a look at it and evaluate it,” Ms. Fleury said.

What Mr. Matney calls “upstream care” doesn’t have to end there and can extend to other workers doing similar tasks to “stop them from starting to get hurt.”

“The cost of keeping someone at work is minimal compared to the cost of losing someone and having to replace them,” in addition to the physical effect on employees, Ms. Fleury said.

While such programs may increase workers comp claims initially, the severity — and thus costs — decline as workers receive timely care, Ms. Henderson said.

United Parcel Service Inc. has an industrial athlete component of its larger work readiness, safety and wellness program, said Bob Gerlach, the Atlanta-based company’s global director of injury prevention and comprehensive health and safety process.

“To be fit from the job is a lot different than to be fit for the job,” Mr. Gerlach said, adding that UPS delivery drivers walk about four miles a day.

“Think about the routine of a delivery driver,” he said. “In and out of a vehicle multiple times, having to retrieve goods out of the vehicle and/or if they’re picking them up, taking them and putting them in the vehicle. There’s some physical activity in that, but just doing those actions alone only conditions a certain number of muscles.”

UPS, which is trying to promote overall fitness among other goals, recommends that its employees begin the day with basic upper and lower body stretches, Mr. Gerlach said. But some groups go further. For example, one UPS operation in California started doing yoga and went 13 months without an injury, he said.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
http://www.businessinsurance.com/article/20150830/AUDIO/308309984/industrial-athlete-programs-help-employers-increase-employee?tags=%7C63%7C70%7C307%7C257

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Interprofessional approach works to keep rodeo athletes in top form

In a room behind the bustling chutes and alleys of the Sidney Iowa Championship Rodeo arena, members of the Justin Sports Medicine program are hard at work.

These men and women, more than 90 percent of them volunteers, are dedicated to treating or preventing injuries to rodeo athletes.

“If it wasn’t for these guys, I don’t know how many of us would be able to continue down the road every day,” said professional freestyle bullfighter Tate Roads. “They help keep my ankles intact so they don’t give out during the bullfight. I also had a shoulder injury, and they used a shock treatment on it that had it feeling better real quick.”

Mike Livergood, the head athletic trainer at Bellevue University, has volunteered with Justin Sports Medicine for more than 20 years, either at the Sidney rodeo or Omaha’s River City Roundup.

“It’s fun to come out here and help these guys. They are really appreciative of what you do for them,” Livergood said. “They just come in and we take good care of them.”

Pulled muscles, torn ligaments, broken bones, torn ACLs and stitches are often what Livergood sees, but it’s also about preventing injuries.

“We also spend a lot of time teaching cowboys, because a lot of the time they’re out there on their own. It’s just as much preventive as it is anything else. We teach how to wrap properly and go through exercises for stretching, whether they’re in a hotel room or sitting on a tailgate.”

On Tuesday, the first performance of the rodeo, the sports medicine team treated 11 and helped seven others with supplies, such as wrap, tape and ibuprofen.

“It varies with each performance; mostly chronic and preventive taping,” Livergood said.

As an athletic trainer for just as long as he’s been with Justin, Livergood said he enjoys his profession because there is something new every day and because of the people he meets.

“I like the different personalities and the different injuries that come along daily.”

The Justin Sports Medicine program was started in 1980 by Dr. J. Pat Evans and Don Andrews, who thought of providing mobile medical support to professional rodeo athletes at venues where they compete.

After much brainstorming, they created a system across the country so that regardless of where rodeos were held, there was a network of physicians, athletic trainers, orthopedics, massage therapists and trauma surgeons, along with clinics and hospitals, able to provide top-notch medical care to Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association contestants. A year later, the Justin Boot Co. agreed to become the sponsor for the program.

During the first few years of the program, an average of 10 PRCA rodeos were attended and roughly 775 contestants were treated. Today, however, the program provides services at roughly 125 rodeos and to 6,000 contestants.

Services are mostly provided in locker rooms or small facilities like the one in Sidney. However, the program also has fully equipped 40-foot mobile centers, as well as two permanent facilities situated in Guthrie, Oklahoma, and Mesquite, Texas.

In 2010, after the retirement of Evans and Andrews, Dr. Tandy Freeman and Mike Rich took over as executive directors of the program. One of the additions to the program from the new leaders was injury-tracking computer software to track the ever-traveling contestants.

“We have a printout of the contestants that were injured over the past couple weeks, where they were injured, what they injured and so forth,” Livergood explained. “It’s real helpful because it wouldn’t be uncommon for one of those guys to come walking in here.”

But the coolest part of the program, Livergood said, is that it doesn’t cost the cowboys a dime.

Rick Foster of Longmont, Colorado, who works for Justin Sports Medicine as an athletic trainer, said he couldn’t imagine having a better job than traveling around the country helping out rodeo athletes.

“These guys know to take advantage of our services when they’re available and it shows a lot what the PRCA is doing to help their rodeo athletes,” Foster said.

Dr. Jonathan Buzzell of OrthoWest, Nebraska Orthopedics Hospital, has been a volunteer with Justin Sports Medicine for six years. As someone who competed in high school rodeos, Buzzell said he really enjoys the environment.

“Of all the athletes, I think these are the most fun to take care of, but these are the athletes that can be injured the most severely.”

In cases of severe injuries, Foster said, the Justin Crisis Center Fund steps in to help those in need. The Justin Boot Co., in cooperation with the PRCA and the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association, formed the organization in 1989.

Professional freestyle bullfighter Weston Rutkowski said he never misses a chance to get a little extra assistance from Justin Sports Medicine. Rutkowski suffered a serious ankle injury less than six months ago. The 26-year-old Texan said a mixture of electric shock and ice does the trick to help his recovering ankle.

“It helps warm my muscles and ligaments back up to where I can get more movement and a whole lot of flexion back, and not much pain,” Rutkowski said. “Without these guys, it’s a night and day difference compared to if they weren’t here.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
http://www.omaha.com/news/iowa/team-of-medics-work-to-keep-rodeo-athletes-in-top/article_2dd3622a-435a-5403-abb1-88409b033870.html