Education Week - October 16, 2013 - 9

Hospital Partnership Provides Trainers for School Sports
By Paul Minnis
The (Ind.) Republic

Steve Souder thought he was saying goodbye forever to athletic training when he stepped down from that
responsibility in 2007 to devote his
time solely to teaching physical education at Taylorsville Elementary
School.
But because of a new agreement
between the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp., in Columbus, Ind., and Columbus Regional
Health, Mr. Souder has given up
his teaching job to return to taping
ankles and icing shoulders full time
at Columbus North High School.
The two entities’ three-year contract, which took effect in July, will
dispatch four athletic trainers to
schools in the 11,300-student district. The arrangement resulted
partly from increasing concern nationwide about concussions, said Bill
Jensen, the district’s assistant superintendent of secondary education.
Previously, the hospital partnered
with the school system and with
Southern Indiana Orthopedics of
Columbus to provide a trainer at
North High School, but the district used its own funds to pay for a
trainer at East High School.
The cost for four trainers would
have been close to $40,000 this year,
according to the district.

for all high school sports. For varsity
football games, the hospital puts an
ambulance on standby in case an
athlete is badly injured.
The school system’s partnership
with the hospital mirrors other
such partnerships around the state,
as well as similar arrangements
between districts and health centers in Kansas, Michigan, Montana,
Ohio, and other states.
Mr. Souder said he goes to North
High School at about 2 p.m. each
weekday to prepare for student athletes who need to get their ankles

taped or have some other preliminary treatment before taking to the
football field, the baseball diamond,
or the basketball court.

Splitting Responsibilities
Mr. Souder and the other trainers visit the middle schools once a
week, but then often work on those
students at other times during the
week when they stop by the high
school, he said.
For the past seven years, trainer
Kathleen Gratz had split her time at

East High School between teaching
physical education/health and training athletes. She said that left her
only enough time in her training duties to cover some school sports.
Ms. Gratz used to attend all football games, all volleyball games, and
varsity-only soccer games, for example, but now having twice the athletic trainers at East enables them
also to cover school sports such as
golf, baseball, softball, spring track,
and tennis, she said.
Splitting responsibilities between
two trainers at the school also

gives them a better opportunity to
educate athletes about nutrition,
stretching muscles, and properly
lifting weights, the trainers said.
And, students who come to trainers with those kinds of questions
typically have suffered injuries or
have noticed that a body part is getting sore and might become injured.
Contributing Writer Bryan Toporek
contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2013 The Associated Press.,
AP Member Exchange.

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Heading Off Injuries
The National Athletic Trainers’
Association reports that only 42
percent of high schools have access
to licensed athletic trainers.
High school athletes suffer about
2 million injuries each year, according to the Dallas-based Youth Sports
Safety Alliance.
Sports are second only to motor
vehicle crashes as the leading cause
of concussions among people ages
15 to 24, according to The American
Journal of Sports Medicine.
The contract between the Bartholomew School Corp. and Columbus Regional makes the hospital the
school system’s exclusive provider of
sports medicine and athletic services.
The program has benefits for the
school district, athletes, taxpayers,
and the hospital, officials say.
It puts two full-time athletic
trainers apiece into Columbus
North and East high schools at the
hospital’s expense, doubling the
number of trainers that the schools
had previously. The contract also
provides services to Central and
Northside middle schools.
Student athletes work with trainers to reduce risks of injury and to
treat injuries such as concussions,
ankle sprains, and shoulder dislocations during sporting events. The
trainers can also concentrate more on
prevention and education, they said.
Columbus Regional gets an inside
track on referrals when athletes
need more extensive medical attention or rehabilitation at the hospital,
said Linda DeClue, the school district’s assistant superintendent for
human resources.
The athletic trainers attend
games throughout the school year

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