Thanking Exeter’s Athletic Trainers
Many students owe their athletic success this past year to the Athletic Training Center, run primarily by head athletic trainer Adam Hernandez and his two associate athletic trainers, Christopher Hamel and Kalya Medina. These three athletic trainers work together to help students retain good health and return to competing.
Hernandez, Hamel and Medina all came from different backgrounds. Two years ago, Hernandez arrived at Exeter from Tabor Academy, where he had worked as an athletic trainer for four years. Before becoming an athletic trainer at prep schools, Hernandez worked for the U.S. luge team. He has done a lot of clinical work since he became a certified athletic trainer in 2008.
Hamel, who has been a certified athletic trainer for just over 10 years, began as a graduate assistant at Springfield College. From there, he moved to Suffield Academy in Connecticut with approximately 400 students before coming to Exeter. He has been an athletic trainer at the Academy for three years.
Medina has spent most of her 13 years as a certified athletic trainer working with teenage student athletes. She worked at a mixture of colleges and prep schools before realizing that she preferred working with younger student athletes.
Despite having different work experience, all athletic trainers have similar training backgrounds with exception to their majors and specialties. “Athletic training education is standardized so all certified athletic trainers have to learn the exact same things. However, throughout our different careers and workplaces we have most likely developed areas that we enjoy or focus more attention on,” Medina said.
“For the most part our students are pretty good at being advocates for their own health.”
Having been to massage school, Medina enjoys working with massage and rehab therapy. Hernandez described this part of Medina’s work. “Chris [Medina] is really good at preventative medicine, and I would say I’m probably pretty good at manual therapy. I think we all have our special niches, but I think overall we complement each other really well,” Hernandez said
Hernandez elaborated on the benefits of having trainers with differents areas of specialization. “Each athletic trainer definitely brings their own specialty subsets which is what makes our program so great,” he said. These specialties allow the trainers to check in with each other or consistently see the same patients for the same type of treatment. However, athletic trainers are not limited by their specialties. “Despite specializing in particular areas, each athletic trainer could work autonomously and be just fine,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez, Hamel and Medina all agree that their main goal is to return injured student-athletes to their sports as quickly and as safely as possible. “If we’re almost at the end of the season and we think we can get them 80 percent back to the sport, we might push them to do that, or allow them to do that,” Hernandez said. Towards the end of the season, it’s more beneficial to a sports team to have all athletes using their accumulative strength and skills, even if one has a minor injury. However, Hernandez explained, “If they’re in the very beginning of the season, it might be better to take a little bit more time to really make sure they’re healthy for the whole season.”
Acknowledging the competitive nature of student-athletes and the drive to perform their hardest at all times, Medina said, “We have to evaluate and determine if the nature and severity of the injury could have an immediate impact on the athlete’s health and what the long term implications might be.” Ultimately, the athletic trainers decide whether or not an athlete can play with an injury, and to what extent. Considering the expertise of all the athletic trainers, student-athletes take their words very seriously and trust that the athletic training center will help them with their injury. The student-athlete to athletic trainer relationship is very comfortable and relaxed, especially for those athletes who are daily patients.
Evaluating about 100 student athletes each day, it is sometimes hard to perform treatments or spend enough time with athletes. “I know sometimes it’s frustrating when you come in and there are 100 kids in the room or there’s 50 kids and you really just wanna get to where you’re going ... I hope that our student athletes can appreciate that we really do our best to see as many kids as we can and get them to sports safely,” Hernandez said.
This year, the athletic training center has seen far fewer major injuries than in past years. Early spring, Hamel said, “If I’m not mistaken, we also have not had any ACL tears this year—we tend to average one to three per year. Our concussion numbers are also less this year compared to last at this point in the school year.” This is surprising, considering that the number of student athletes who visit the athletic training center has gone up, according to statistics gathered by the iPads on which each student is supposed to sign in and out. Although some students find this to be an unnecessary process, Hernandez said that it is meant to track the type of care and the frequency of treatments.
With the increase of usage of the athletic training facility, it’s easy to wonder if every injury is legitimate. However, Hernandez believes that most of the athletes take the trainers seriously. “There are definitely some students who have found loopholes around being at practice on time or using the center always in a way that they necessarily need, but I think for the most part our students are pretty good at being advocates for their own health,” he said. Medina added that sometimes athletes come in searching for advice in order to prevent an injury so that they do not miss more practice in the future.
Athletes are very grateful for the athletic trainers, who work hard every day to ensure the safety of Exeter’s sports teams. Despite the athlete being injured, each interaction with the athletic trainers is friendly and reassuring. “For me, I like working with youth athletes because they usually have a real love for the sport they’re doing ... especially at a place like Exeter,” Hernandez said. After a successful year, athletes and trainers alike can’t wait to share their love for athletics again in the fall.