They usually arrive to the practice session of your favorite LSU sports team before the players and stay long after the coaches are gone. They are the people fans see on the sidelines stretching the limbs of players and keeping them hydrated during the course of an LSU football game. They are the people who rehab your favorite athlete before, during and after a game when an unfortunate injury occurs. Despite this enormous amount of responsibility and pressure, the athletic trainers are nothing more than team water boys to many people. The student body generally overlooks the workload of an athletic trainer. A kinesiology degree with a concentration in athletic training at LSU requires six semesters of clinical experience during which students must complete a minimum of 200 hours of outside training per semester.
Following completion of the clinical experience, students must pass the National Athletic Trainers’ Association Board of Certification exam to be certified. The LSU Athletic Training program is fully accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education Programs, and Ray Castle, director of athletic training concentration, said the LSU curriculum ensures that all students who enter the program will have the tools necessary to obtain future jobs in not only athletic training but other medical fields as well. “We are very focused on what the product is,” Castle said. “And the product is students who, if we’ve done our job in teaching, that when they leave here they are successful.” Kinesiology senior Zane Kirby is one person striving for the success Castle mentioned. Kirby is currently a student trainer for the LSU women’s basketball team, and he said the perception some fans have of trainers being nothing more than water boys can be discouraging at times. “A lot of times when a fan looks at what we do, they’ll call us a water boy or something like that,” he said. “It’s kind of frustrating because [fans] just see surface-level stuff, but there’s so much more that we do.” Kirby said that with so many opportunities available to people with backgrounds in athletic training, he is not sure what route he’ll be taking once he graduates. On the other hand, Ana Gross has already decided her career path. Gross graduated from LSU in 2004 with a kinesiology degree with a concentration in athletic training. After graduating from the University of Southern Mississippi with a master’s in sports administration in 2006, she worked as a trainer within the Southern Mississippi athletic program before becoming the full-time trainer for the LSU softball team in July. Gross said she is astounded by the glorified water boy perception. “[Athletic training] is very time-consuming,” she said. “You just have to have a passion for it because it sometimes ends up taking a majority of your life.” Gross said she often hears the perception that trainers are nothing more than glorified water boys, and that perception astounds her. “It’s just unbelievably fascinating to me because most of the time we have more of a medical background than anyone can imagine,” Gross said. “To make an assumption that we’re just water boys is pretty funny. You just kind of get used to it. [If] you work hard and it’s fulfilling enough, you tend to ignore the stereotype.” Beau Lowery also tends to ignore the familiar misconception of athletic trainers, partially because of his background in other medical fields. Lowery is currently an associate trainer for the LSU baseball team, but his extensive experience in physical therapy is evidence that several different roads can be taken to arrive at the destination of athletic training. The Seminary, Miss., native graduated from the University of Mississippi Medical Center with a bachelor’s degree in physical therapy in 1998. Before coming to LSU, he worked three summers at the Pittsburgh Steelers’ training camp. Lowery said sports fans referring to people in his profession as water boys arises from the fact that hydrating players is usually all fans see. “People don’t see the injury evaluations after the game, or they don’t see … situations that [may] arise before a game, so I understand that perception,” he said. “It annoys all of us because there’s a lot of long hours that we have to put in to take care of these athletes.” The world of an athletic trainer is as hectic as it is rewarding. Working on a daily basis with athletes and coaches who are constantly in the limelight comes with the athletic training territory, but Gross said the attention given to the people she works with makes her job even more satisfying. “I worked at a smaller school, so this is a lot more prime-time, especially the softball program being one of the top programs in the country,” Gross said. “I couldn’t have been more lucky to get a job like this.” Students interested in entering the athletic training profession can attend an informational meeting today at 2:15 p.m. in the Broussard Center for Athletic Training. For more details about the meeting, students can contact Gross at 578-2491.
—–Contact Tyler Batiste at [email protected]