Personal Narrative: The Athletic Training Program

Everyone has something they’re talented at, and many people have to try multiple things before they find their talent(s) that they have. As a child, my parents like many others had me participate in multiple activities. For example, I took dance classes, played a great amount of sports, and was a participant in many plays. In my freshman year, I tried running track and field. During the course of it, I developed shin splints and I proceeded to go to the athletic trainer. The athletic trainer here, Todd Korabek, has a system that works for the whole program. New injuries will see an aide, and that aide will then write up a card for them which lists their name, sport, injury, and body part. The aide doesn’t write the injury because only the athletic trainer can diagnose. After the athletic trainer treats all old injuries, he evaluates the new injuries, which happened to be me at that moment. Watching the aides assist Mr. Korabek really inspired me and his profession intrigued me.

My clinical rotation for the fall semester of my junior year is with the King’s College Men’s soccer team. As an athletic training student, I hold a lot of responsibilities regarding the prevention, evaluation, diagnosis, management, and treatment of these student athletes. Most of my daily activities can be separated into three groups, the pre-practice, pre-game, during the activity, and post- practice and post-game.

I know that you have a background in ballet, but can you tell me a little more about yourself? How did you get into this field ?

I actively participate in a variety of extracurricular activities. Both seeing a need and having an interest, I along with some other girls founded our school’s first Athletic Training Program during my freshman year. In the program, we educate students on common injuries seen in high school sports. As the head trainer for our school’s swim team and girl’s track team, I attend to athletes’ sore muscles, apply wraps, and provide assistance to our new trainers (2015-2018). I’m also a leader within my school’s division of Future Health Professionals of America(HOSA), helping to energize the students preparing for healthcare jobs in the future. I became one of the founding members of Stem Moms in 2014, a program that educates students about

I am not like other people where I’ve had difficulties with my family but I have had one major struggle that has impacted my life. It did not affect me for just one summer it will be affecting me for the rest of my life. The exceptional hardship I have had was when I broke my leg in five places and had to overcome the difficulties of getting better. It was such a difficult experience because it affected my love of playing basketball. However, that experience led me on my path in pursuing a career in Sports Medicine. Breaking my leg was awful but it helped me think about what I wanted to study when I go into college.

It was a warm summer morning on August 28, 1998 when my mother went into Sioux Valley hospital to give birth to a baby boy. After an agonizing 15 hours in labor, I was born. They named me Bryce meaning “Nobel One.” My full name was Bryce Jay Edberg, I got this middle name after my father, which his middle name was also Jay. Being born at exactly 4:03 a.m., with a staggering 23 inch body and weighing 10 lb 4oz the delivery was nothing less then painful.

Growing up an athlete I had always been in above average shape. I was a healthy weight with toned muscles but, like most teenagers, I was eating garbage. I loved cheeseburgers and ice-cream and everything in between. For years I was telling myself this diet was ok due to the fact that I worked out. It wasn't until my sophomore year when I stated wondering how great I could be if I ate correctly. I decided to get a food tracker app and count calories. I was going to stick to a strict eating plan making sure I was only eating 1200 calories a day and eliminating snacking all together.

There are several reasons why I am athletic. The ways I am athletic and stay athletic is through training and playing football, basketball, and baseball. First off, I train to get into shape. I do push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, and many other exercises like that. Also, I practice all the different sports and do different workouts to get better. The first sport that comes around is football. I play quarterback and linebacker and have been very successful. The past two years the teams I have been on haven’t lost a game! Next, is basketball, and it is my favorite sport. I have played it for all my life and still play it today. I play point guard and I like to shoot. During my basketball years, I have made many buzzer-beaters and

A personal experience I have went through in my life would be making it to districts in track and field my sophomore year of high school. Making it to districts was a big accomplishment for me and my teammates because track is something that I take a lot of my time to focus on and do multiple hours of training so I am able to compete with the other athletes. I come from a small town in Ohio called Oak Hill. The sport track and field is something you do not hear that much about because our high school is not very big and very few athletes actually run track to make it somewhat far in competition, so for my 4x1 team to make it to regionals was a big deal for me considering it is something that does not happen that often at my local high school.

I have recently become very passionate about the sport of running. In the past every sport I’ve tried, I’ve never been the best at. I've played almost every sport imaginable, from dancing, gymnastics, soccer, basketball, competitive cheerleading, horseback riding, lacrosse, swimming, and now to running cross country and track. I've always just been the one on the team who did nothing and was in all honesty just there to observe. Don't get me wrong I've always tried as hard as I could, but never succeeded. My junior year of high school one of my friends came to me and asked if I would join the cross country team. I looked at her as if she were actually going insane. At the time I could barely run a half mile, and probably would have cried at the idea of running five

Two years ago I joined a no-cut rowing club. Rowing, from what I had heard was a highly athletic sport. Looking back on it, I wasn’t what anyone would consider athletic. For the first week or two of practice, I was skeptical if this sport was an appropriate fit for me, primarily because the training we were doing was far more advanced than anything I had ever experienced. The only other sport I had participated in was the local little league baseball team and as you could imagine it wasn’t a very intense sport. But with a little coaxing from my parents I kept going to practice. Over the next three months of practicing I began to get into the rhythm of the daily workouts. At the end of three months I began to fall into place among the other

Unfortunately, I know all too well about terrible training experiences. There is nothing worse than unprepared trainers who do not know how to utilize the technology or how to train other people. In my case, I was amazed at how far I got in the finance business when I was hired as an assistant manager of a store location, my second day of training the manager quit and they never sent anyone to replace her. Subsequently, they moved me into the manager position, and I taught myself everything via a handbook. Honestly, I would have never thought that such a rocky start would have lead me to be a District Manager over nineteen stores, all brand new locations, and then moved to a Regional position in charge of seventy-one stores. Even with the promotions,

“Try not to get lost in comparing yourself to others. Discover your gifts and let them shine,” said Jennie Finch. I’ve had the great opportunity of discovering my God-given talents through sports. I have played volleyball, softball, and basketball and have truly been impacted by helping my teammates. I would like to use what I have learned in my career field of becoming a veterinarian.

Throughout my entire life, I have been an avid golfer. From the moment my parents gave me my first set of clubs when I was five, I have loved golf. I enjoy practicing, playing and as strange as it might sound to someone who does not play golf, I even love to watch golf. To me, I have always been enthralled by the precision necessary to be a consistently good golfer and how just a one degree difference in your swing or on the club can make a dramatic impact on the distance and ball flight of your shot. Over the past couple of years, I have practiced for hours, trying to perfect each individual aspect of my game. When I was ten years old, I started traveling across the country to compete in national tournaments and had

“Let’s go, Sam! Speed it up!” my eighth-grade basketball coach barked at me impatiently. Honestly, I deserved it; I was slow. I had natural athletic ability—I come from an athletic family—but it only goes so far when you’re carrying around a spare tire.