Brandon Intro. to Athletic Training

Brandon Intro. To Athletic Training

Kelley Becker

11/15/05

Shadowing Project

For this project, the certified athletic trainer who I have shadowed for almost eight hours in just one day is Candace O’Bryan, currently the athletic trainer at Archbishop Hoban High School in Akron. Candace has worked at Hoban now entering her third year at the high school. She works alone as a trainer there but works along side one team doctor who is at every game, and the other one being a neurosurgeon but is just a parent helping out.

Candace works through a clinic in downtown Akron next to the Spaghetti Warehouse. She only works at the clinic in the off-season which is the summer for her since school is out. The reason for that is because during the school days, normally the time you work at the clinic, she is teaching at Hoban. Candace is also a Health teacher at the high school for a few classes in the morning. Overall, she works fifty plus hours a week, which doesn’t include tournaments out of state.

Since she has a contract to work at Hoban through the clinic, she has only certain things that she has to abide by. For example, she covers every sports home game. But football and baseball she travels with them to away games that they have. It’s just the way the contract was made when she was hired.

To get where she is so far, Candace attended Kent State University where she went through athletic training. Just recently after she finished her major and became certified, she finished up with a masters degree and had a second major of teaching, which gave her the chance to teach while she is at Hoban.

Candace doesn’t get to school until around 9:30am during the week and teaches during the morning school hours. To help her out during the game coverage’s Candace has three to four student trainers from the high school who helps her out. They usually gather together after school, and if the football team is playing that day, they eat with the football players in the lunch room.

Shortly after they eat, they gather any things that she needs and heads over to the field that are across the highway. There they have baseball fields, football, soccer, etc., but she heads to the trainer room which is located next to the football team’s locker room under the stands. Her training room is filled with supplies, tables, tubs, and ice machines. Then there’s the huge cabinet full of the supplies which she uses which is under lock and key. The one thing that she doesn’t have and can’t use unless their eighteen years old is over-the-counter drugs, even if it’s something like Ibuprofen.

Around this time it should between 3:00pm to 4:30pm pending the sport. For football game coverage’s, she gets there late because of the team meal. But starting around this time, she normally has a bunch of people in there, becoming very chaotic at times. This is called wrapping hour(s) where any previously injured athletes come to get themselves checked, like dislocations to concussions, and get wrapped also which she and her student trainers do. There are occasions when she as athletes with torn or ripped ACL, etc. who require special processes to be down to them.

An example is the running back for the varsity team. He had a complete ACL and MCL tear in his left knee. She had to put tape and braces on him and make sure everything was fine and restated that he has to get surgery. Then there’s the time when the quarterback who just had a dislocated shoulder last game came in. His dislocation required an electrical stimulation, which reduces inflammation and swelling and an ultrasound on his shoulder to be done to him.

Each person who comes in has to sign in and state what there in for.