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Athletic Trainer and AED Saves Wofford Linebacker’s Life

Article reposted from WYFF
Author: Baker Maultsby

Linebacker Michael Roach collapsed on the football field. The Wofford Terriers were playing Tennessee Tech in Cookeville, Tenn., and Roach had just come off the field after a 13-play drive.

Had an Automatic External Defibrillator (AED) and medical professionals not been close by, Roach may not be alive today.

A junior at Wofford College, Roach suffered from a cardiac arrest caused by a heart condition called apical hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, characterized by the thickening of the heart muscle, which can restrict blood flow.

The collapse came during the first game of the 2016 season. Roach was really tired, but that wasn’t alarming – an intense series of plays in extreme heat tend to leave players feeling drained. He sat on the bench for a rest and a drink of water.

Suddenly, he felt extremely light-headed. And that was it: Roach’s heart stopped beating.

“I was down and out for like a minute,” he said. “I was completely out of it.”

During that minute, Roach’s teammates were shouting for help and athletic trainers rushed to his side.

Athletic trainer Will Christman, a Spartanburg Regional Sports Medicine staff member who works with Wofford athletes, grabbed an AED and applied the electrodes to Roach’s chest.

“I was thinking, ‘This just got real.’ We got into game mode real quick,” Christman said.

Also on hand were team physician and orthopaedic specialist Stephen Kana, MD, and Cookeville cardiologist Stacy Brewington, MD, who happened to be at the game and rushed down from the stands to help.

The team administered CPR and electric shock from the AED. All the while, the game was halted and the stadium was eerily quiet.

Roach woke up in an ambulance, unaware that he had nearly died and was taken to Cookeville Regional Medical Center for evaluation.

“When I woke up in the ambulance, I asked to get back in the game,” Roach said. “I had no idea what had happened.”

At Roach’s home in Kenosha, WI, his family had been watching the game online and his brother saw a comment on Twitter that identified Roach as the player down.

“I think it got pretty frantic at my house,” he said.

Wofford athletic director Richard Johnson called Roach’s family as soon as he got word that he was breathing and alert. His parents drove through the night to Cookeville to be by their son’s side.

Though his health is under control, Roach was forced to give up football. Doctors advise him to only engage in light-to-moderate physical activity.

Roach has plenty to keep him busy: he’s working on a double major in Business Economics and English and has plans to attend law school. His experience as a patient has inspired him to consider pursuing career opportunities related to public health.

Giving up football was hard, but he was glad to remain part of the team. Roach helped the coaching staff during the remainder of the year, and plans to work with the team next season as well.

“I miss playing, but I’m just glad I’m here,” he said.

A grant from Spartanburg Regional Foundation enabled Spartanburg Regional Sports Medicine to purchase AEDs for athletic programs at Wofford and other local colleges and high schools. To help save others like Michael Roach, the Spartanburg Regional Foundation heart division is launching an AED Assistance Program during heart month. Applications will be accepted starting in February through April 5. The heart division will be providing 10 local nonprofits, churches, and organizations life-saving AEDS.

Visit RegionalFoundation.com to apply for the AED assistance program.

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Athletic Training legend “Doc” Anderson named to NATA hall of fame

Article reposted from Troy University Athletics
Author: Savanah Weed

A former Troy University coach and head athletic trainer has been chosen to be inducted into the National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA) Hall of Fame.

John “Doc” Anderson, professor emeritus, received a call with the news on Monday, Feb. 6, that he almost didn’t answer.

“I looked at the area code, and I thought it was one of those robocodes,” he said. “I answered and someone said, ‘Is this John Anderson?’ and I quietly said, ‘yes.’  He said, ‘This is the president of the NATA, and you’re going to be inducted into the NATA Hall of Fame.’”

John “Doc” Anderson

John “Doc” Anderson

The NATA is a professional membership organization “for certified athletic trainers and others who support the athletic training profession” that has expanded to over 43,000 members since its inception in 1950, according to its official website.

Nominations for awards are open from Aug. 1 through Sept. 15 and recipients are selected in February.

“A committee made up of members from each of NATA’s 10 districts reviews each candidate’s application materials and, after several rounds of discussion, they recommend candidates for Hall of Fame induction,” Angela De Leon-Coleman, senior honors and awards coordinator, said.

In order to be eligible for induction into the Hall of Fame, the nominee must be an NATA member in good standing, have 30 years Board of Certification certification or Retired Certified with initial certification at least 30 years prior to the award year and 30 years of membership in the NATA.

Anderson said he was surprised and grateful to be recognized, but ultimately believes the honor goes back to TROY.

“It’s Troy University’s because I stand on TROY’s shoulders,” he said. “It belongs especially to the College of Health and Human Services, the Department of Kinesiology and Health Promotion, which we are under, and the athletic training program.”

Anderson has experience at every level of athletic training: student, coach, trainer, professor and curriculum director.

As a student-athlete at Auburn, he helped lead the Tigers to their 1964 SEC Cross Country Championship before graduating in 1965.

Anderson began his coaching career at TROY four years later as the head coach for the track and field and cross country teams for 12 seasons while simultaneously serving a 14-year stint as the head athletic trainer (1967-80). During this time, his teams won three track and field conference championships and seven cross country conference championships.

He left TROY in 1980 to take on the head athletic trainer position at LSU for 10 years, but returned in 1990 and continued to coach the cross country teams.

Between his start at and return to TROY, Anderson coached 45 All-American players, including Charles Oliver who won the 1976 NAIA 400-meter National Championship, two Alabama Collegiate Conference championships in 1970-71 and one Gulf South Conference Championship in 1978 with the track and field team. The cross country teams won 10 Gulf South Conference titles and five NCAA Division II Regional Championships.

“My motto with athletics is simple,” he said. “Athletics makes you strong. Study makes you wise. Character makes you great.”

He was named the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Coach of the Year twice from 1973-74 and the National Cross Country Coach of the Year in 1992. He earned the conference coach of the year title six times throughout both of his careers at TROY and was also named the NCAA Division II Regional Coach of the Year four times.

As an athletic trainer, Anderson served at the 1996 Olympic Games for the U.S. Track and Field squad and was a member of their medical team in 1984, 1988 and 1992.

He received the NATA Service Award in 1997, was inducted into the Alabama Athletic Trainers Hall of Fame in 1999 and earned the title of Most Distinguished Athletic Trainer award for the NATA in 2006. In 2013, he was inducted into TROY’s Sports Hall of Fame.

On June 28, Anderson will be one of six people inducted into the NATA Hall of Fame in Houston, Texas, and will join the ranks of more than 250 distinguished men and women.

“After all the years I served in athletics, this ain’t mine,” he said. “I’m just carrying the award back from [Houston].”

He and his wife, Susan, currently reside in Troy and have two children, Cindy and John III.

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New face working with Eastern Wyoming College athletes

Article reposted from The Torrington Telegram
Author: Erick Starkey

A blown out knee at rugby practice in high school gave Bryant McCarty the itch to become an athletic trainer, a journey that landed him at Eastern Wyoming College.

McCarty has worked with athletes, factory workers and soldiers since high school. He got the urge to work in the medical and rehabilitation field after the incident in high school.

“In high school, I was playing rugby, and one practice I blew my knee out,” McCarty said. “I was able to not have to have surgery and that was my first brush with physical therapy and any kind of medicine really.”

McCarty, originally from the Salt Lake City area in Utah, traveled from one side of the country to the other before settling in Goshen County. After high school, he studied for a year at Brigham Young University. He served on a mission in Texas for two years before returning to Utah.

“When I got back, I was thinking about what I wanted to do,” McCarty said. “For some reason I kept thinking about that physical therapy clinic that I had gone to.”

McCarty went to the same clinic in Utah and got a job as a physical therapy aide for about a year. After that, McCarty joined the Utah Army National Guard as a medic. He then went back to school and continued to work full time for the National Guard. McCarty graduated BYU with a degree in athletic training in 2013.

“I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do going back to school and I was looking at all the majors and I kind of thought, well athletic training, that’s basically what I’m doing now, but only for a sports team, so I’ll just do that,” McCarty said. “I was like, well I’m a good medic so I think I’ll be a good athletic trainer.”

With a degree in athletic training, McCarty took his talents to Connecticut, where he worked as an industrial athletic trainer. He worked with factory workers who had pain lasting more than a couple days. McCarty also took the knowledge he got from the workers to come up with ways to prevent injuries. He estimated 75 percent of his work was in preventative care.

“I was wanting to get back into the athletic side of athletic training and deal more with sports teams,” McCarty said after he and his family moved back west after a year in Connecticut. “One thing that I really have a passion for is rehabilitation, but then taking that rehab knowledge and putting it into sports-specific strength and conditioning.”

Since Dec. 5, McCarty has been balancing his time between the five sports EWC offers. Recently, each week he has been working out with the volleyball team, getting to the arena to work with the rodeo team and preparing mens’ and womens’ basketball players for games and practices.

McCarty spends much of his time on campus with the athletes. He often creates individual workouts and treatment plans for the players. Like the players, McCarty often grabs a dumbbell or medicine ball to do the same workout he is putting the players through.

“That’s one thing about me that you don’t see a lot of other people do, as far as strength and conditioning, where they’ll get down and actually do the workout with everybody else,” McCarty said. “That’s a personal decision that I’ve made. I’m not going to be a hypocrite when it comes to working out.”

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Padres Instructed Athletic Trainers to Withhold Medical Information from MLB

Article reposted from Bleacher Report
Author: Adam Wells

The San Diego Padres are in hot water with Major League Baseball because of their lack of medical disclosure regarding players on their roster.

On Thursday, ESPN.com’s Buster Olney reported Padres officials instructed their athletic trainers to keep two distinct files of medical information for players on the team, with one being used only by the Padres and the other to be used by other big league teams.

As a result of the investigation, Padres general manager A.J. Preller was suspended 30 days without pay, per Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Olney, citing two sources, reported that “trainers were told in meetings during spring training that the distinction was meant to better position the team for trades.”

Olney noted MLB teams feed their medical information into a central database that protects the privacy of each individual and is accessible to teams when necessary. Each time a player receives treatment in the training room, no matter what it might be, that information is supposed to be filed.

In San Diego, however, Olney noted that “athletic trainers were told to post the details of any disabled-list-related medical situations on MLB’s central system, but they also were instructed to keep the specifics about preventive treatments only on the Padres’ internal notes.”

On Aug. 6, Olney reported MLB was looking into the Padres’ exchange of medical information for their trades with the Miami Marlinsand Boston Red Sox. The Padres dealt Drew Pomeranz to Boston on July 14 and Colin Rea to Miami on July 29.

Per Olney, “Sources within the Boston organization say it wasn’t until after the deal was made that they became aware of some of the preventive measures that had been provided for Pomeranz.”

Meanwhile, Rea made his Marlins debut July 30, throwing 44 pitches in 3.1 innings before being removed with an elbow injury. Miami sent him back to the Padres on Aug. 1—getting minor league pitcher Luis Castillo back in return—and four days later, it was announced Rea would undergo Tommy John surgery and likely miss all of next season.

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Rams First Female Full-Time Athletic Trainer Takes the Lead on Relocating

Article reposted from: Los Angeles Rams
Author: Zach Welch

As well-documented as the Rams’ relocation to Southern California has been, the work that goes into such a large operation can sometimes go unnoticed.

Spearheading the athletic training room’s move from St. Louis, Mo., to California – first to Oxnard, then to Irvine and finally to Thousand Oaks – was Rams Assistant Athletic Trainer Hilary Stepansky.

Moving an entire medical operation three separate times – for a total of nearly 2,100 miles in five months – is no small feat and her peers have noticed the effort that has been put in.

“Since we relocated to Los Angeles she’s been the catalyst for organizing the logistics during our transition,” Rams Physical Therapist/Assistant Athletic Trainer Byron Cunningham stated. “Within a five-month span we have moved our athletic training room a total of three times. It’s unbelievable to me that she’s able to lead that entire process and still complete her day-to-day athletic training responsibilities.”

The logistics and the move that Stepansky has led is just one notable piece from Stepansky’s story.

Stepansky is one of only five full-time, female athletic trainers in the National Football League and her work is appreciated in the Rams locker room.

“She’s a hard worker,” Rams RB Todd Gurley said when asked to describe Stepansky. “What I appreciate the most about her is that she’s always there anytime I need anything – no matter how big or small.”

“Her passion for medicine and player care really fits in well with our identity as an athletic training staff,” noted Rams Assistant Athletic Trainer Tyler Williams.

At the forefront of hiring female athletic trainers in the NFL has been Rams Director of Sports Medicine and Performance Reggie Scott. Scott, who enters his seventh season with the Rams was a part of something special during one of the Rams’ preseason contests in Los Angeles. During Week 2 of the preseason, the Rams and Kansas City Chiefs had a combined five female full-time or student athletic trainers working the game – a number believed to be the highest in a single game in NFL history.

“It’s been wonderful to see how the NFL has embraced women in athletic training over the past few years,” Scott stated. “The culture that Jeff Fisher, Les Snead, and Kevin Demoff have cultivated to provide this opportunity for women in the NFL workplace has been wonderful to be a part of.”

Scott was able to appreciate the special occasion that occurred against Kansas City.

“It has been a delight to have Hilary and various female student athletic trainers provide care for the players on the Rams organization,” Scott said. “Hilary has been a great addition to our staff and her energy and work ethic has been instrumental in our continued success in the athletic training department.

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Illinois Athletic Trainer Moves into New Role

Article reposted from theIntelligencer Edwardsville
Author: theIntelligencer Edwardsville

Drew Dintelmann is leaving his post as athletic trainer at Edwardsville High School, but a familiar face will be taking over the full-time role.

Katie Hamilton, who has been helping at EHS over the last six years through Apex Physical Therapy, is the new athletic trainer. She replaces Dintelmann, who had been a full-time district employee since the 2008-09 school year and was working with Edwardsville the last 15 years. 

“I’m really excited to be taking over at Edwardsville. It’s going to be the same stuff but in a different position,” Hamilton said. “The transition will go pretty smooth because the relationships with the kids and coaches has already been built. It will just be moving to a different position and not have Drew available.”

Dintelmann had been a fixture at EHS. 

A 2001 graduate of Western Illinois, he took an internship at Alton Memorial Hospital following graduation. It was through the hospital that he was connected to Edwardsville.

Now, 15 years later, Dintelmann will explore other career options.

“I’m looking to get back into my first passion which is strength and conditioning,” Dintelmann said. “I feel like I’m not really leaving, but stepping into new roles where I can still work with Katie and the kids.”

Dintelmann’s last day on the job is Friday.

With all fall sports, excluding field hockey, getting under way over the next week, the change in athletic trainers couldn’t have come at a better time.

“Starting off, it’s going to take a little bit of time for everybody to get used to just one person being around. The familiarity of everything and getting this started before school will really help,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton is a 2010 graduate of Western Illinois. 

A former softball and basketball player in college, injuries derailed her playing career. But, she turned a negative into a positive by finding a career path in athletic training.

Hamilton started working at Apex Physical Therapy in Edwardsville after college. It was there that she was loaned out to EHS.

“It was a great experience,” Hamilton said. “Coming out of college, I always thought I wanted to work in a college setting. Once I got to this high school, I realized how big everything was and how serious athletics were being taken. It was like coming into a small college.”

Dintelmann said the addition of Hamilton was needed for EHS.

“We saw a need for a second person and sought out a couple physical therapy clinics. Things fit with what we were looking for and hopefully we started a trend in not just southern Illinois but also the state,” Dintelmann said.

Edwardsville High School has 24 IHSA-affiliated sports, along with field hockey and ice hockey. Including the freshman and junior varsity teams, there are over 60 teams at the high school.

With approximately 800 athletes, it wasn’t uncommon for either Dintelmann or Hamilton to be spread thin. 

Hamilton will now be on her own. She’s ready for the challenge.

“It’s not bad dealing with high school kids here, because most of them want to be here and want to be playing their sport,” Hamilton said.

An old Spanish classroom in the northeast corner of the school is the athletic training room. It comes with a couple athletic tables and treadmill, among other necessary items. It is easily accessible to students during school when they have free time. 

EHS also has another facility across the street inside the District 7 Sports Complex.

While she may be the only athletic trainer moving forward at Edwardsville, Hamilton won’t feel alone. The coaches at EHS are very aware of the importance of trainers.

Hamilton said having a good relationship with the coaches — in all sports — is very important.

“The coaches are really good about staying on top of the kids and making sure they are getting done what needs to be done. As long as we keep lines of open communication, there aren’t many issues,” Hamilton said.

It’s those relationship with the coaches, along with the student-athletes, that Dintelmann will miss most.

“I just hope that I was able to make the same impact on the kids that made an impact on me,” Dintelmann said. “I had the pleasure of working with some great coaches. We don’t see a high turnover in coaches at Edwardsville for a reason. They bring some character development into the program. 

“It was a pleasure and honor to work with some of the coaches. The relationships built were fantastic.”

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West Virginia AT Program provides local flood-damaged high schools with donations

Article reposted from Jackson Newspapers
Author: Brian Harper

With last week’s announcement that Herbert Hoover High School would be permanently closed due to damage from the June 23 flood, the entire Hoover community was forced to endure yet another loss. The Huskies’ athletic training program, not unlike the school itself, lost everything in the flood.

But thanks to Ripley High Athletic Trainer Steve Lough and the Ripley athletic training program, the road back will be made slightly easier.

On behalf of the Ripley AT program, Lough presented Hoover athletic trainer Stephanie Clark with a donation of training materials last Friday which included a training table, several Gatorade coolers, gauze, gloves and a host of other related training materials.

Lough and his staff have also secured donations of equipment and funds to both Clay County and Richwood High Schools, two of the other area communities affected by the flood.

While Hoover certainly has a long way to go in terms of getting back onto the playing fields, Ripley’s donations are a wonderful first step.

“[The donated equipment] will tremendously help us,” Clark said on Friday after receiving the donation, “Everything was completely wiped out. We have absolutely no athletic training supplies. It takes a lot, at least for a football season to get through. Then, I also cover basketball home games, soccer and volleyball, too. So, all that stuff was gone and now we have stuff to replace it, so that’s awesome.”

Lough and his staff have been proactive since the flood hit in terms of gathering and distributing donations. They began with a car wash to raise funds–close to $500 in about half a day–for the three high schools, and then progressed onto raising monetary donations from the City of Ripley, as well as other local businesses, medical vendors and citizens to purchase other equipment for the high schools, in addition to providing them with funding to purchase larger equipment.

Lough was in contact with a few members of the Ripley community, as well as those in the medical field to acquire some donations of medical goods and different items that the three programs could use.

All three high schools lost all of their training and medical equipment, so the Ripley program was able to come up with the replacement items to facilitate getting them back to their sporting activities.

For Clark, the lone trainer of Hoover athletics while also working through Elk Valley Physical Therapy, the donations are especially meaningful coming from another athletic training program.

“It means a lot,” Clark said, of Ripley’s donations, “Having the help from other athletic training programs around the state has been awesome.”

For Lough and his staff, these donations were just the latest opportunity to help out the community.

“Our training program has done this going on almost seven years,” Lough said, “Each group of young ladies and men we’ve had in the program are committed to helping the community out. They spend a lot of time and put in a tremendous number of hours. I think it just shows a great deal of opportunity for them to help out the community.”

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In summer heat, athletic trainers call for safety measures

A thousand-dollar expenditure for an automated external defibrillator (AED) could mean the difference between life and death for some young athletes, a cost that one Little Rock, Arkansas high school knows too well.

A heart abnormality caused 16-year-old Antony Hobbs to collapse during his Parkview High basketball game in 2008. Hobbs was unaware of his condition, likely present since birth. Though an ambulance responded, he died about an hour after an otherwise ordinary game tip-off.

The outcome differed starkly two years later when another Parkview player, Chris Winston, collapsed on court with the same condition. A new state law, named for Hobbs, had required that AEDs be placed in schools, and AED use led to Winston’s survival.

While Arkansas’ policy followed tragedy, the National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA) and the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine are asking schools to proactively take measures to protect kids before summer training for fall sports.

“We’ve mostly been reactionary in terms of our preparations,” said Jonathan Drezner, a University of Washington sports medicine physician and co-author of an editorial in the Journal of Athletic Training that calls for emergency practice implementation in schools. “It shouldn’t be that a kid has to die for the school to be prepared,” he said.

In 2014, 11 high school football players died during practice or competition, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research. Five deaths were a result of brain injury or cervical fracture. Six were the result of heart conditions, heat stroke or water intoxication.

“AEDs are a relatively inexpensive way of saving a life,” said Doug Casa, CEO of the University of Connecticut’s Korey Stringer Institute, which works to prevent sudden deaths in sports. Casa authored NATA’s “best practice” guidelines in 2012 for school sporting events.

In addition to calling for AEDs onsite, the guidelines advise schools to develop heat acclimatization programs, with phase-ins of equipment, along with gradual increases in intensity and duration of exercise. Football practice in early August is the most dangerous time for heat strokes in young athletes, according to the organization.

The recommendations also call for schools to coordinate their emergency plans with local emergency services.

Nationwide adoption of the guidelines has proven slow, however. Only 14 of 50 states, for example, meet NATA “best-practices” regarding heat.

And according to the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation, only 19 states have laws mandating AEDs in at least some schools.

Jason Cates, an athletic trainer for Cabot Public Schools in Cabot, Arkansas, was among those who worked for changes after Hobbs’ death to ensure the safety of Arkansas’ student-athletes. For districts with limited budgets, he suggests enlisting support from local booster clubs and parent-teacher organizations, and holding fundraisers during games.

To schools that install new turf or expensive video screens instead of safety measures, Cates says, “If you can afford to do that stuff, you can afford athletic health care.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/07/23/us-health-kids-sports-idUKKCN0PX1XN20150723

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Manning Passing academy well cared for

The Boy Scouts of America motto is “Be prepared.”

The sports medicine team at Thibodaux Regional Medical Center is taking that same approach for the Manning Passing Academy at Nicholls State University.

With more than 1,200 campers and 120 instructors — ranging from college players to coaches — arriving in Thibodaux today for the annual four-day camp, Thibodaux Regional’s sports medicine team has been hard at work for several weeks.

The athletic trainers and staff have been working behind the scenes preparing for the four-day camp, including bagging an estimated 30,000 pounds of ice.

“We have been working to get ready for this for about six weeks,” said Amelia Castell, assistant coordinator for the Sports Medicine Center. “We have been preparing to get our staff in line and figuring out what materials we need, such as bagged ice.”

All of this work is nothing new for Thibodaux Regional’s sports medicine team, as it has been involved with the Manning Passing Academy since it arrived in town.

The Manning Passing Academy — now in its 11th year at Nicholls and 20th overall — provides high school quarterbacks and wide receivers a chance to work on their skills with a pair of current NFL quarterbacks in Peyton Manning (Denver Broncos) and Eli Manning (New York Giants).

Larry D’Antoni, coordinator of Thibodaux Regional’s Sports Medicine Center, said his goal is to make sure everyone has a safe and fun experience.

“There is a lot of coordination that goes into it with the different facets of the game,” D’Antoni said. “We have to work with the Manning camp officials to figure out which fields they are going to use, so we can set up all of the tables and coolers. All of that has to be set up ahead of time because there is no way with 1,200 plus campers to do this in real time. We have to do it ahead of time.”

Castell said the biggest obstacle for many campers is the heat and humidity associated with southeast Louisiana.

“Although they are not wearing any football equipment, they are not used to our climate,” she said. “Many of them are from out of state or even out of the country, so they struggle with our weather and some even develop heat-related illnesses. They are not used to our heat and humidity, and running three practices a day in these conditions are just rough for them.”

Keeping Manning Passing Academy participants cool and hydrated is only the start for the sports medicine team.

Athletic trainer Annalise Himmel said each camper undergoes a premedical screening during the registration process to help in the evaluation process if any problem arises.

“This gives us a good idea if any of the campers have allergies to ant bites and bee stings or if they have asthma,” she said. “This helps us get a general idea of which we campers we need to keep an eye on during the camp.”

Thibodaux Regional’s Sports Medicine Center is always looking for ways to improve its overall work at the camp, and this year will be no different.

With numerous athletic trainers, volunteers and doctors working the camp’s 32 hydration stations, D’Antoni said communication is essential, so every worker will have Walkie-Talkies to relay messages on possible injuries and where ice, water and other supplies are needed.

D’Antoni said he is also working with Barry Keim, the state climatologist for Louisiana, to help provide accurate weather forecast during the duration of the camp.

“We want to be able give the Mannings and coaches the most up-to-date information and let them make a sound technical decision on how to alter practice or adjust practice in an effort to keep the kids safe,” D’Antoni said.

Castell has seen the Manning Passing Academy grow over the years since its first year in Thibodaux in 2005. Soon after graduating from Nicholls and being hired as a certified athletic trainer, she had an opportunity to work at the annual camp and did it for several years.

After spending a few summers working with a baseball team in the New England area, Castell is back in Thibodaux and is witnessing first-hand how much the camp has grown.

“I don’t remember how many campers it had in 2005, but it doesn’t feel like it was as many as we have now,” she said. “Because of that, we’ve had to up our staff, so it’s just a greater undertaking. But now I feel we are more prepared and better equipped to deal with it than we’ve ever been.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20150709/ARTICLES/150709733?p=1&tc=pg