Nicole Shaffer will have a special rooting interest when the United States men’s and women’s volleyball teams take the court at the Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
The Dixon resident, now a senior at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, had a hand in the teams’ preparation after doing an internship with USA Volleyball this spring. She was in Anaheim, California, from May 9 through June 17, working with the national teams on a daily basis.
Shaffer, who played 4 years of varsity volleyball at Dixon High School and 2 more at Sauk Valley Community College, is set to graduate from EIU in December with a degree in athletic training. Part of that degree requires her to do an internship.
She noted many prospective athletic trainers who graduate from Eastern do internships with NFL teams. That is something she was open to, but was not her first choice.
“I wanted to do something equally as big as an NFL team,” Shaffer said.
Shaffer got on her computer, Googled “athletic training scholarships,” and read an article about a girl from North Central College in Naperville who did an internship with USA Volleyball in Anaheim. She got on the job networking website LinkedIn to research USA Volleyball, and hooked up with one of the head trainers for the organization.
That trainer instructed Shaffer where to send her application. Shortly thereafter, she did a phone interview, and within a day, she got the job.
“I thought I completely trashed the interview,” Shaffer said. “I told my mom, ‘I’m not going to get this. My interview did not go well.’ But then they called the next day. I was like, ‘Oh, cool.’”
Shaffer was one of three student trainers to do internships, but while the other two only worked every other day, she was there every day for 6 weeks. Most days it was 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., unless one of the teams had a scrimmage somewhere. Then, Shaffer’s duties could extend well into the evening.
Those duties included getting the hydration station set up, ultrasound treatments, hooking up athletes to electrical stimulation units, stretching, massages, taping ankles, and folding mass amounts of laundry. She performs many of those tasks with athletes she works with at EIU, but it was taken up a notch on the eve of an Olympic Games.
“Every single one of them was amazingly nice,” Shaffer said. “I never had any issues with an athlete. They were all very kind, and they were all open to helping me learn, too. If I did something on them and they usually get it done differently, or if they wanted it a different way, they were capable of telling me that, but then letting me continue practicing on them.”
Shaffer is assigned a different sport each semester at EIU, and she has worked with track & field, volleyball, basketball, soccer, and rugby athletes over the years. Tending to world-class volleyball players is a different animal, however.
“The first thing I had to get used to was how tall all of them were,” Shaffer said. “My first couple of days, I’d look up, and these guys are pushing 7 feet. I would have to stretch them, they’re so heavy, and I’m just a little girl. Their whole leg was as tall as my body, and I’d have to lower the table all the way to the ground just to stretch them.”
For the women’s volleyball team, Shaffer was also able to observe the mental training team members were undergoing. The United States lost to Brazil in the finals of the 2012 London Olympic Games, and a rematch is anticipated in 2016 – this time on the Brazilians’ home turf.
“They’re doing a lot of mental toughness training just to prepare for that,” Shaffer said. “That was kind of cool to see. It’s like, ‘OK, we’re going to be completely out of our element because they have the gold medal from last time and now we’re in their home country.’ I’m really going to be rooting for them.”
The internship with USA volleyball was strictly a learning experience for Shaffer – completely on her own dime; she received no salary. After one night in a hotel, a friend reached out on Facebook to find out if there was somebody she could stay with for a while. She ended up living with the mother of a friend of a friend.
“I drove out there because I needed my car,” Shaffer said. “When I hit the California border, I was like, ‘I don’t have a place to live,’ and I started freaking out. It all worked out. I just put everything in God’s hands.”
For meals, she’d eat the same catered lunch the athletes ate, then she’d gather leftovers to eat later. It was about cutting down expenses – and soaking up as much knowledge as possible about being an athletic trainer.
She learned the USA Volleyball trainers are continually taking classes to improve at their craft. It’s something she plans to do wherever she ends up working.
“Wherever I go, I want it to be an environment where they’re open to continual education,” Shaffer said. “Seeing these treatments that I’ve never seen before, and how well they actually work on Olympic athletes, that was really interesting.”
Shaffer, who got bit by the athletic training bug by job shadowing Sterling High School athletic trainer Andi Sumerfelt, will return to EIU in a few weeks; classes begin on Aug. 22. In addition to her schoolwork, she’ll serve as a student trainer for athletes at Villa Grove High School this fall.
After that, she plans to earn a master’s degree in athletic training, at some to-be-determined university. Then it will be off to join the workforce full-time, and she’ll be able to draw on her experience of working with some of the world’s best athletes, and how they prepare to do their thing.
“Their job is to come in, get treatment, practice, lift, and take care of their bodies,” Shaffer said. “That’s their job, so it was really interesting to see how well our treatments worked within sports medicine, when the athletes are working equally to take care of their bodies.”
Shaffer file
High school: Dixon, class of 2011
College: Sauk Valley, class of 2013; Eastern Illinois, current senior
FYI: Set to graduate from EIU with degree in athletic training in December. … Did internship with USA Volleyball this past spring, and worked with men’s and women’s national teams. … Will serve as student trainer at Villa Givre HS this fall. … Played 4 years of varsity volleyball at Dixon, then 2 years at SVCC.
