Tag: Stephanie Clark

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Stephanie Clark named West Virginia Athletic Trainer of the Year

Article reposted from The Parkersburg News and Sentinel
Author: The Parkersburg News and Sentinel

Stephanie Clark of Cairo was named Athletic Trainer of the Year by the West Virginia Athletic Trainers’ Association at its 2017 Annual Sports Medicine Conference held March 3-4 in Flatwoods.

Clark, who resides in Elkview, works at Elk Valley Physical Therapy working outreach for Herbert Hoover High School, one of the three high schools in the state affected by the massive June 2016 flooding. Although Herbert Hoover High School is no longer in use and students go for a half-day at Elkview Middle School, Clark made it her mission to continue her work with her students.

“Fall sports were questionable, but we made it happen,” she said. “Football went to the playoffs, volleyball made a showing at the state tournament, and the boys’ basketball team went to the state tournament for the first time in the school’s history. It is easy to do my job when I work with a pretty great community to help these kids out.”

Clark is a 2013 graduate at West Virginia Wesleyan College.

The award was in line with the skills developed at Wesleyan, she said.

“Creative thinking was always encouraged at Wesleyan,” Clark said. “Working with an AA high school in a small West Virginia town under these special circumstances requires me to be able to think creatively in order to do my job well.”

She said the athletic training department at Wesleyan is among the best in the state, she said.

“I had more hands-on opportunities because class sizes were small. I was put in real-world situations every single day and was expected to answer the whys of these situations,” Clark said. “The department shows tough love, and everyone becomes a family that pushes you to achieve.”

Clark said she was humbled being named Athletic Trainer of the Year.

“It is a huge honor, really,” she said.

“I was surprised because there are so many great athletic trainers in this state. I am just doing my job, and it is good to know I am doing it well.”

At Wesleyan, Clark was a member of Zeta Tau Alpha, Kappa Alpha Rose, the concert band, collegiate 4-H club, the academic affairs committee, the National Athletic Trainers’ Association and the West Virginia Athletic Trainers’ Association.

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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.”