As fall sports practices have begun and students, teachers and coaches alike prepare for another school year, there’s another group of people who are a little less noticeable but who are just as important, particularly to school sports teams.

While the coaches and players receive all of the glory for every touchdown, goal, spike, basket or base hit, without the school’s athletic trainers, those student athletes would have a tough time reaching their optimum performance level.

First here, last to leave

Football practices started Aug. 8 and the trainers were right there with the team to tend to every sprain, bruise, cut or anything else that could come their way.

Guido Arquilla is an athletic trainer at Lyons Township High School and said even in the preseason, he puts in a lot of hours tending to the needs of the football team.

“I usually get here at about 5:45 (a.m.), with the boys getting here at 6:15,” Arquilla said. “We stick around even when they’re on their break and we stay through their second session at about 2 o’clock.

“Usually I’m not out of here until about 3:30 (p.m.) in the preseason.”

Arquilla isn’t just a trainer, though, he also teaches introduction to sports medicine and health at LT. So he’s usually at school before 7:30 a.m., teaches a full schedule, then takes over his athletic trainer duties after school during the school year.

“A typical Friday during football season, it might be midnight before I get home,” Arquilla said.

Arquilla’s situation is more unique just because he teaches at the school. For Willowbrook athletic trainer Heidi Smith, her days during the school begins at 2 p.m. and runs until everything ends that night. She fills water coolers and water bottles and walks around and monitors each practice. During the preseason, her days will go from 7:30 a.m. until about 7:30 p.m.

“This week’s a little crazier,” Smith said of the first week of preseason football. “Everyone’s practicing at different times so my days are a little longer.”

Julie Duprey is in her second year on the job as an athletic trainer at Montini. She routinely attends three-a-day practices, some of which end as late as 6 p.m., and usually works more than 40 hours a week — just in the preseason alone.
Her job duties depend on the day.

“Some days are busy and I seem to be taping, stretching and addressing new injuries,” Duprey said.  “Others I am watching practices. This is a hurry up and wait type of job.”

Just like the fall sports are in the preseason, it’s also the preseason for the trainers. For now, they won’t have too many serious injuries, and they get to practice working on muscle pulls and the like before getting into the seriousness of the regular season.

“Probably (you see more serious injuries) during the regular season because you’re dealing with full contact every week,” said Glenbard North Head athletic trainer Mike Burgoni. “There’s definitely more muscle cramps and pulls in the first two or three days of practice. Once you get into games, then you start having more serious injuries.

“Really, at the beginning of the year, the injuries aren’t too bad. They start building up. (Right now) the top priority is to make sure they’re hydrated. If some of them have heat exhaustion, you have to get them in and cool them off.”

Athletic trainers’ duties vary depending on the schools and the coaching staff they’re working with. According to Bill Durand, head athletic trainer at Geneva, he’ll help out with something as simple as fixing a helmet.

“It’s all preparations — bracing and taping,” Durand said. “During doubles, I end up being the equipment manager, even though it’s not in my job description. We’ve got 75 kids out for football, and we have 10 coaches, so if I can fix a helmet, it’s one less thing they have to do.”

The mark of a solid athlete is one who is the first one to practice and the last one to leave practice. However, many times the trainer is in even earlier so that the athlete can be taped up and taken care of before practices or games. The trainer then has to stay after practice to take off tape, ice down body parts and make sure every player all right.

Berdine Giltner, who has worked as a trainer for eight years, is entering her third campaign at Immaculate Conception in Elmhurst. This time of year is one of the most hectic as she is often at the field eight hours a day, six days a week.

“I attend practices and games,” Giltner said. “You do a lot of pre-stuff like taping and water. Afterwards you repeat it, look at injuries and ice. You are usually the first one here, except for a few coaches, and the last to leave, except for a few coaches.”

She doesn’t really see much of a difference between the preseason and the regular season, except when it comes to the weather.

“I would say not any different,” Giltner said, when asked about number of injuries in the preseason. “Pads, no pads, it really doesn’t make a difference. Not so much more injuries but there are more hydration and heat issues during the preseason than the regular season.”

Playing through pain

Some trainers admit that players will try to hide injuries and play through pain, even though they may be doing irreparable damage to themselves. Most say that coaches don’t put too much pressure on them to rush kids back and that they always err on the side of caution.

However, trainers have to have a sixth sense sometimes when it comes to knowing that a player is injured and needs medical attention.

According to Sarah Anderson, trainer at Wheaton St. Francis, players especially will hide injuries if they know it will keep them out of the lineup.

“Sometimes I do find kids who hide their injuries, especially if they know that particular injury is going to keep them from playing and practicing,” Anderson said. “Then they hide it and try to fight through it.
“I try to educate them on conditioning and taking care of themselves, and tell them to report injuries when they do happen. On the first day of practice I talk to (the players) as a group about things to work on and look for like hydration and concussions, especially this time of the year with it being so hot.”

Eileen Ziegler, who works for both AthletiCo and for Lisle High School, agrees.

“There’s a lot of kids to watch over,” Ziegler said. “I have to keep an eye on them because a lot of them won’t tell you if they’re hurt or sick. You have to know the kids and learn their demeanor and watch out to see if it changes.

“You can never completely avoid injuries. Hydration, stretching, warm-ups and cool-downs — there’s a lot you can do to defend against the risk of injuries and illness. On the first day of two-a-days we go over proper nutrition and hydration.”

Scary situations

Part of being an athletic trainer is being prepared for any kind of injury that may come your way.

While sprains, strains and bruises are the most normal injuries, broken bones and ligament tears can also pop up.

However, in the case of Smith, she had to deal with something more than that. In this particular case, it was life and death.

During a home baseball game against Oak Park-River Forest in the spring of 2005, home plate umpire Scott Marangi suffered a heart attack and was later pronounced dead a Good Samaritan Hospital.

Smith said they did CPR and performed other life-saving procedures after Marangi collapsed.

“That was a scary situation,” Smith said. “One of those, ‘I hope I don’t have to deal with that again.’ But that’s also when you’re glad you’re prepared the way you are.”

Burgoni has seen some scary situations, as well, where kids have gotten placed in compromising positions. As bad as the injuries were, they could have been worse.

“(I’ve seen) a skull fracture,” Burgoni said. “I had two, both the first year I was here. One was in a freshman girls basketball game and the other was in a girls powderpuff football game.

“Our fieldhouse used to have a concrete floor. Both people had their legs taken out and hit their head on the floor. Obviously, we don’t have concrete now.”

Thankfully, not every trainer has had injuries as traumatic as these. It’s the day they all dread when that does happen, though.

“Concussions and broken bones are the big ones,” Anderson said. “There’s some serious stuff, but more in college than here. I haven’t dealt with too much serious stuff here.”

More than a job

As many duties as Arquilla has at LT, he doesn’t look at being a trainer as work. Being a sports fan, he enjoys being on the field and around the athletes, coaches and fans.

“When it comes to the athletic training part, it’s more than a job,” said Arquilla, who also notes a broken neck as the worst injury he’s seen — when he was a student trainer at LT in the late 1980s, no less. “I really enjoy doing this.”

For Smith, she says the biggest perk of her job is similar to that of sports writers — getting paid to watch sports.

“I always say that my favorite thing is I get paid to watch sports,” said Smith, who works through Accelerated Rehab. “I grew up with sports so I’m like, ‘I get to watch sports for my job.’ I don’t have to sit in an office somewhere or sit in a cubicle in front of a computer — I get to watch sports.

“It’s cool to see them grow up from a freshmen all the way up to a senior, and then hear what they’re doing in the future. ... I like (all the sports). That’s the great part. There’s at least one sport each season that I can get into and get involved with. And you get excited when the teams do well or the kids do well.”

Being someone who isn’t a coach, but someone who sits around and waits for injuries might seem to be boring to some, but that isn’t the case according to the trainers.

“When I get bored, I drive around,” Burgoni said. “Usually, there are 10 different sports going on at the same time. If I’m at football, I’ll go over and talk to the cross country coaches. Then I’ll go over to soccer.”

Training a trainer

Most high schools have opportunities for students to work with the athletic trainer, but in reality, much more goes into becoming a certified athletic trainer.

Aspiring trainers must attend an accredited college and major in athletic training. In their senior year, they must take a series of national tests to achieve their certification.

“We’ll get them involved, sometimes we’ll go recruiting, but most of the time they come to me and we’ll help get them started,” Arquilla said of how LT goes about finding student trainers. “The last few years, we’ve had students who have been doing this 12 seasons, which is all four years.

“Every year, we seem to have one student who graduates with the intention of going into athletic training in college.”

Staff writers Scott Schmid, Ryan Lowry, Jason Rossi and Mike Considine contributed to this report