The athletic training room is located between the North and South gym. HHS athletic trainer Ashley Conrad will be doing a few things throughout the month to celebrate National Athletic Training Month.
Dealing with injuries is one of the most common obstacles athletes face in their high school career. Walking into the athletic training room after school on any given day, one can always find multiple high school athletes walking in and out, being taped with athletic tape, sitting on one of the two treatment tables, or talking with HHS athletic trainer Ashley Conrad.
Conrad has been the athletic trainer at HHS for the past eight years, the length of her athletic training career so far, not counting working during college.
The overall goal of athletic training is to help athletes be at their best, which includes not only treating athletes but also educating them on how to take care of any injuries they may have.
“So the overarching mission of my job is to evaluate injuries, treat the injuries, and prevent the injuries. So every day it’s a combination of those things happening,” Conrad said. “But there’s also a lot of education that happens. Making sure the athlete knows what to do, how to take care of themselves. And then also there’s a big part of working with other health care providers to make sure that we’re all collaborating to get this athlete to where they need to be.”
An average day for Conrad looks like getting to the school at 7 a.m. to do paperwork and treating a few students before class, leaving at 9:30 a.m., and returning to the school at 2 p.m. to prepare for after-school events, get students ready for practice once school gets out, and to go to any events she has that day.
“Like I said, she’s always around. Sometimes some athletic trainers are hard to find, like at other schools they just leave right away. She always sticks around to make sure that everybody’s taken care of before she leaves,” senior basketball player Caden Block said.
Other parts of Conrad’s job include administering baseline concussion testing, keeping records, and creating plans to keep athletes safe in all circumstances.
“I also think one of the things that they don’t see is how I’m creating policies and things to keep athletes safe, for example, heat policy, what does that look like? Cold policies, concussion policies, different things like that that are in place but you don’t know they’re in place,” Conrad said.
One of Conrad’s favorite parts of athletic training is building relationships with athletes she is working with.
“I would say, working with the kids,” Corad said on her favorite part of her job. “This is why I do this job, it’s definitely not about the money or the notoriety or anything like that. If I didn’t have kids, in doing this, I wouldn’t have this job.”
In addition to athletes, Conrad also works with student athletic trainers, an extracurricular opportunity she started during her second year working at HHS.
“When I was in high school I wasn’t actually an athletic trainer, but I had friends who were student athletic trainers. And I just felt like there were a couple reasons why it was important. Number one, it’s giving kids an outlet to learn something that’s not necessarily a sport, and all of my kids that I’ve had have played sports in the past, maybe they’re not playing them now,” Conrad said. “But they’re getting to see this other side of athletics and not just playing. But then also it’s a big help to me because if I can teach you a skill, for example, taping an ankle, that helps take a wave or that helps me so I can attend to other people and you can do it, and it creates a little bit of autonomy… so it allows you to create that independence for yourself and those relationships with your peers. So I just wanted to create something that was an extracurricular that was not based in just well, you have to play a sport.”
People who have worked with athletes who are injured would say that being injured can be a difficult experience for student-athletes between dealing with an injury itself and the effect it can have on their athletics. Conrad’s goal is to help athletes during that time and to help them reach their goals.
“I think the biggest impact that I hope that I have with kids is that I’m creating a safe place for them to come when they are in a vulnerable state and getting them to a place where they can meet their goals,” Conrad said. “And I hope that I am doing that in a way that they’re comfortable and that they trust me and they understand the role of someone like me that I am there for you and that I’m there to help you and your goals.”
Conrad would agree with the saying that if you love what you do it doesn’t always feel like work. To Conrad, what she does for her career doesn’t feel like a job at all times.
“I’m very lucky that I get to do a job that doesn’t really always feel like a job, especially when I’m sitting on the sidelines at a game. I mean, what kind of, well what other jobs can you say do that,” Conrad said.
