By Haiden Widener, Campus Carrier Sports Editor

Bailey Albertson |CAMPUS CARRIER

Student worker Susie Phillip stretches out football player, Chandler Polk, before practice. After players have been injured they go to the athletic trainers to check up on their healing progress. Some of the check up includes things like stretching.

When Berry athletes get injured, the athletic training student workers are always there to nurse them back to health. Whether it be massage therapy, stretching, cleaning out stitches or bandaging an open wound, the athletic trainers know how to help. The athletic training program at Berry is particularly unique because students of all majors have the opportunity to work in this field and get hands-on experience. 

Incoming freshman are chosen to work with the trainers through a selective process that focuses on their interests, prior experience and majors. Students already enrolled at Berry who would like to work for the program go through an interview process. 

“Hiring is a really big deal for us because we really want to know the people that we’re hiring,”said Ginger Swann, assistant athletic director of sports medicine. “We feel like if we get the right people that share our values, then we’re going to have the most success.”

Swann was a part of the student athletic training program during her years at Berry and said the experience and mentoring in the program helped prepare her for her future. 

The program＊s vision statement is “to create a culture that ignites a passion to serve.”They heavily focus on four values that help drive the program’s success: integrity, compassion, service and unity. The program uses these values as motivators for the student workers to become independent and use their strengths to help serve the student athletes. 

While core values are a major part of the program, so is the hands-on experience. The program immediately puts students in a position to learn and grow in the field. They bring in a physical therapist once a week, so students interested in that field can shadow him. There is also the administrative side where students organize files and deal with the insurance involved with the program.  

Sophomore Greg Goodson has always been interested in orthopedic work and physical therapy. The student work program noticed this on his resume and he was placed into the program as an incoming freshman. When he started at Berry, he said he was torn between the two programs, but this job has made him decide on physical therapy. 

“This job has taught me different ways to do treatments and taught me different parts of the anatomy that I had never known,” he said. 

Senior Natalie Allen was not placed into the program as a freshman, but hired through the interview process when they needed more trainers to work with the first-year football team. Although she is no longer planning for a future in medicine, she said that this job has still helped her. 

“[This job] has taught me how to work with people, be more confident and how to be a leader,” she said. 

Being an athletic trainer is a full-time, year-round  commitment at Berry. Goodson estimated that he works 16 hours a week with the program. 

Allen estimated even more, “a normal practice I’ll be here five and a half hours,”she said.

During practice trainers hand out water, work through treatment with the injured players and help anyone who gets hurt during practice. With three practices a week and treatment sessions for the players on their off days, that＊s around 20 hours per week. Some student trainers also travel with the teams to away games, making their hours well over 20 per week.  

Adding classes into the mix can make things difficult, but Goodson said that if he needs to study, it is not ever a problem to get a shift covered. According to both students, the job and life experience is worth the time they put in. 

While the culture of the program is of huge importance, their main focus is to help student athletes stay healthy. When a player goes down on the field, trainers are the first responders and they stick with the athletes throughout their healing process until they are cleared to play again.

Every staff member of the athletic training program at Berry works to make sure all athletes on campus are game ready and their student workers are life ready. 

“We’re doing this because we want to help and care for the athletes,” said Allen.