Tag: Milton High School

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Wisconsin Athletic Trainer is key to success

Article reposted from The Milton Courier
Author: Michael Gouvion

Many kids dream of what they want to be when they grow up. Sometimes it works out, many times it doesn’t.

Leah Keyes knew from a young age that she wanted to be in healthcare. She has stuck with her dreams and took over as Milton High School’s athletic trainer as the fall sports season began.

“I loved my athletic trainer in high school and would find myself in his room during my off seasons, asking him endless questions about the evaluation and tests he would perform or procedures he would do with the athletes,” said Keyes, who graduated from Pulaski High School near Green Bay in 2010. “I shadowed him during my senior year of high school and fell in love with the profession.”

Keyes has always been involved in athletics. She said her main sport was softball, but she also played basketball, volleyball and ran cross country. She even umpired in a youth softball league, volunteered at various youth camps and helped out with grounds keeping for summer tournaments.

After high school, she graduated with a bachelor of science degree in athletic training from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in 2014.

Throughout her four years at UW-La Crosse, she worked rotations with the collegiate sports and athletes, including the women’s soccer team, baseball, cross country, men’s track and field, men’s basketball and football. She provided athletic training services at the NCAA DIII Track and Field Championships in 2013 and Wrestling Championships in 2012.

She also has experience at the WIAA Track and Field Championships, which take place in La Crosse each June.

Keyes moved to the Rock County area after getting an athletic training job through Beloit Health System at Beloit Memorial High School in August 2014, and worked there until this past August. She said she had a friend group from Milton at UW-La Crosse, so when she moved to the area, she had her connections.

“I love the small-town feel,” said Keyes, who took over for Elyse Midas. “It reminds me a lot of my hometown and where I went to high school.”

Midas moved on for a clinic position with Mercy Health System.

Now that she has one season under her belt, Keyes said she is loving her job at MHS so far.

“I am getting to know staff, coaches and athletes, and I look forward to meeting more as we move into the winter sports,” Keyes said. “Everyone has been very welcoming and great. One reason I love working with high school athletes is because of the life lessons that high school sports teach. I know that my experiences with youth and high school sports helped make me into the person I am today. High school athletics teaches things that you can’t learn in a classroom.

“Within my first two months of working at Milton High School, I have seen great respect, discipline and leadership displayed by both coaches and student athletes.”

Keyes, who is employed by Mercy, arrives around 2:30 p.m. each day to MHS, and once the final bell rings, her room can be flooded quickly with athletes. She will tape many athletes and get them out to practice and also do injury evaluations or check-ins.

“Sometimes they need a full evaluation, a treatment plan, a referral, practice restrictions, etcetera,” Keyes said. “I work with athletes who have concussions through their rehabilitation to return to their sport. I also do general rehab with injured athletes.”

Keyes also provides athletic training services during many events at the high school. She is licensed to practice athletic training in Wisconsin and Illinois.

MHS Athletic Director Brian Hammil said Keyes is doing a great job picking up where Midas left off.

“We are fortunate that Mercy is able to attract such quality trainers,” Hammil said. “I feel confident that our athletes will continue to receive outstanding care.”

In her time as the athletic trainer at MHS, Keyes said she wants to build trust and relationships within the high school and with the community.

Although she might eventually want to transition into an athletic training in a physician setting with more regular hours and less late nights, Keyes said she loves the high school setting right now.

“My goal as an athletic trainer is to see the athletes at MHS achieve their maximum potential as athletes,” Keyes said. “From preventing injuries to treating injuries, the main goal is to get them back to competition both safely and efficiently.”

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Wisconsin Athletic Trainers Explain Concussion Numbers

Milton High School had 411 students on sports teams last year. About one in 16 of them suffered a concussion.

The 25 concussions reported in Milton last year were up from 18 the year before.

Is that a trend or has modern medicine found a better way to track and diagnose concussions?

The answer lies somewhere in between.

Twenty years ago, concussions were an afterthought in high school sports. A bump on the head was a bump on the head.

Usually, a player who could tell his coach how many fingers he was holding up was sent back into the game.

Times have changed.

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Head injuries are getting serious attention. A concussion—defined as a brain injury caused by a blow to the head or a violent shaking of the head and body—can have debilitating, long-term effects if not treated properly.

Kathy Calkins, a licensed athletic trainer and the head trainer at Janesville Craig, said an increase in documented concussions is due in part to new terminology used to define concussions.

The old definition of a concussion was somebody getting a bump on the head that caused short-term memory loss or a headache. Now, concussions are clearly defined as impaired functioning of some organ, especially the brain, as a result of a violent blow or impact.

Testing has become more sophisticated, too.

Neurocognitive testing is a more scientific alternative to athletes self-reporting after injury. The testing focuses primarily on memory, attention to detail or problem solving. Relying only on athletes’ reports of symptoms might result in them returning to competition prematurely, exposing them to additional injury.

ImPACT testing is a type of neurocognitive test often used by physicians to compare athletes’ post-concussion abilities to baseline scores taken before the injury.

Although ImPACT testing is a valuable tool, most athletes who suffer concussions don’t go through the test before being cleared to return.

Of the 37 documented concussions at Craig during the 2014-15 calendar year, only six athletes went through ImPACT testing before they were allowed to continue any physical activity.

Since 2010, Janesville Parker has documented 92 concussions, with a high of 27 in 2013. Of those 92 concussions, 53 were football-related.

Parker has had 652 athletes out for football since 2010, meaning about one out of every 12 football players in that time suffered a concussion.

The football-related concussions dropped to 11 last year after a documented high of 15 in the 2013 season.

Parker had 740 students participate in a sport during the 2014-15 calendar year, and 26 reported concussions. That means about one out of every 28 suffered a concussion. The Parker participation total counts each student only once regardless of how many sports he or she played.

Morgan Mason, Parker’s head trainer, said the concussion numbers at the school could be misleading.

“In the fall, we tend to devote a lot of time to football and their athletes,” Mason said. “Boys soccer (also a fall sport), in my position, tends to not frequent the athletic training room as much as they probably should, so the numbers get skewed from that.

“Overall, our concussion documentations have increased over the last three years. And you still have a fair share of kids, who even though they sign an agreement not to, hide and don’t report possible concussions.”

Craig, which measures athletic participation by counting each student every time he or she is in a sport, had more than 1,200 participants and 37 concussions last calendar year. That’s an average of one for every 33 athletes.

Milton’s athletic program documented 25 concussions the last calendar year. Of those, nine were football-related, and seven came from boys and girls soccer.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
http://www.gazettextra.com/20150816/new_terminology_leads_to_rising_concussion_numbers