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Jul. 17—When Aidan Gasper was a junior in high school, he competed in a wrestling tournament in Janesville. During his first match of the day, he broke his neck.
There was no athletic trainer on site.
The 2024 Dover-Eyota grad was performing a headlock on his opponent when his arm got caught behind him. Gasper and his opponent fell to the ground, essentially dropping 400 pounds on the back of his neck. He heard a crunch and knew something was wrong instantly.
It's been more than three years since Gasper was injured on Feb. 4, 2023, but he still remembers the events of that day vividly.
For 30 minutes, Gasper was on the mat on his back waiting for an ambulance to arrive. He remembers staring up at the bright lights on the gymnasium ceiling, worried because he felt numbness and tingling throughout his body below his neck.
Since an athletic trainer was not present at the tournament, Dover-Eyota wrestling coach Brian Lehnertz, a volunteer firefighter with EMT training, came out to the mat to check on him. An emergency room nurse in the crowd came down from the stands and stabilized his C-spine for 45 minutes.
"She probably saved my life," Gasper said. "I'm not going to lie."
Gasper had surgery the next morning at Mayo Clinic to fix an unstable C6 cervical spinal fracture.
"There was a chunk of bone that had broken off from my spine that was pressed up against blood vessels that were under my brain," he said.
Gasper, 20, has since made a full recovery, which included working with D-E's athletic trainer Shauna Hoff, who is employed through Mayo Clinic. Gasper is heading into his senior year at the University of Northern Iowa, where he is on a pre-med track. He is currently an intern in the surgery department at Mayo Clinic.
After his injury, Gasper considered pursuing a career in athletic training, but ultimately decided against it due to the cost of school and demanding work schedule, all for little pay.
A shortage of athletic trainers
The Post Bulletin polled 40 activities directors in southeastern Minnesota and received responses from just more than half of them. Respondents cited the most common obstacles to staffing an athletic trainer were budgetary constraints and a limited pool of candidates. A few others said their school's geographic location and high turnover rates were challenges.
Of the 21 responses, 100% have a partnership with Mayo Clinic or another local hospital/clinic, while nine ADs answered that they share their athletic trainer with one or more schools.
Owen Mills, an athletic trainer contracted with local high schools and Viterbo University, is employed by Gundersen Health System in La Crosse, Wis. Mills, who is licensed in both Minnesota and Wisconsin, has served as the athletic trainer for Houston Public Schools for two and a half years.
Due to his "demanding" workload, Mills is transitioning out of his role as the AT for Houston High School to focus on his other schools, and the La Crescent-Hokah athletic trainer will be taking over his responsibilities. Gundersen used to cover Caledonia, but had to cut the school from its contract. Event coverage for Houston was also cut due to a lack of available trainers.
Mills is one of 15 full-time athletic trainers employed by Gundersen, and six are dual-licensed. Mills has seen high turnover rates firsthand. In the five years he's worked for Gundersen, he's seen more than 20 athletic trainers cycle through.
"It's not ATs leaving to go to other AT jobs," Mills said. "It's ATs leaving the profession as a whole, because no one wants to work 50 hours minimum a week on evenings and weekends and stuff like that for not a ton of money. It's just not a very fun job unless you really like watching sports."
Mills went to high school in Michigan's Upper Peninsula before getting both his bachelor's and master's degrees at Northern Michigan University. His high school in rural Michigan did not have an athletic trainer.
"That's honestly kind of why I'm an AT now," Mills said. "I used to live in a town that was smaller than Houston is, and we never had any services like that."
With an enrollment of about 150 high school students, Mills said he would not be able to find 40 hours' worth of work to do at Houston High School each week. He said several students would benefit from seeing him more than two or three hours per week in the training room, but the number of students and the cost make it hard to justify the district paying for a full-time trainer.
Another obstacle is the education required to become an athletic trainer.
The National Athletic Trainers' Association's Athletic Training Strategic Alliance started requiring new athletic training students to obtain a master's degree before they are eligible for the Board of Certification exam, as of 2022.
"It's just hard to get people to be willing to work at a rural secondary school like that for the amount you're getting paid, especially when they have a master's degree and don't want to work for 25, 30, 35 grand a year," Mills said. "Especially with the cost of living, it's just not sustainable."
The life of an athletic trainer
Jess Morken works for WinnMed, out of Decorah, Iowa, and splits her time as the athletic trainer for both Mabel-Canton and Spring Grove. She is one of four full-time athletic trainers for WinnMed. There are also two part-time trainers on staff.
Every Friday in the fall, Morken tapes ankles for the starters on the Mabel-Canton and Spring Grove football teams before games, about 18-20 ankles per team, no matter if the teams are home or away. It's a task she's happy to take on alone instead of letting it fall to a coach or one of her coworkers, since she knows her athletes best.
"Time management is a key part of athletic training anyway, but Friday nights, it gets a little trickier," Morken said.
She starts her day in the WinnMed physical therapy clinic before heading to Mabel-Canton to see athletes who ask to be seen after practice or games the night before. After lunch, Morken goes to Spring Grove and sees students after school and during practices. Depending on the day of the week, she covers games and events as well.
Athletic trainers work during the day but also work nights and weekends. Sometimes they even work when they're not scheduled to.
Last winter, Morken was at home sick. She received a FaceTime call during a Mabel-Canton basketball game and learned one of the players had been injured. Some parents in the crowd who are in the medical field wanted another opinion and called Morken.
She evaluated a broken wrist over the phone.
Another time, Morken received a call when she was on vacation in the Dominican Republic.
"I wasn't going to answer it, but they called twice, so I thought 'I'd better,'" Morken said. "My coaches trust me, and so if there's not an athletic trainer (at an away game), they are more than welcome to call me and ask me, even if I'm on vacation, I guess. Not every athletic trainer will answer the phone, obviously, but it comes to how comfortable you are."
Morken sets boundaries in her position, but since she is a Spring Grove resident and her own kids are in the district, she is friends with parents of the athletes she works with.
"I'm part of both of these communities, and I feel welcome, and part of the community, and part of that is just being friends with the people that are calling," Morken said.
She said she manages fine and doesn't feel "overwhelmed." Some weeks she works four or five events, and others she only works two. If Morken is at a Mabel-Canton sporting event and an athlete is injured at a Spring Grove game, she will simply leave one school and head to the other since the towns are about a 10-minute drive apart.
"I feel really blessed to work for where I do, and for the school systems I do, but it's not always the case, and so that could definitely be a reason for the shortage, too," Morken said. "It can be overwhelming for one athletic trainer to cover a (Class) 5A school when they have multiple varsity events going on each night. You'd feel stretched thin, I feel."
Mills and Morken said they love what they do, but they agree it's a demanding profession and it's not for everyone.
"I kind of describe it as controlled chaos," Mills said. "You have to be good at multitasking. Even at Viterbo, there will be times where I'm doing soft tissue on somebody, I'm hooking up someone to E-Stim, while I'm writing up a rehab and eating a slice of pizza all at the same time. ... There is just so much to do all the time, and it kind of wears you down."
Mayo High School Activities Director Dan Christoffer is a former Mayo Clinic athletic trainer who is still licensed. When Christoffer was an athletic trainer for Mayo Clinic, he was responsible for Stewartville, St. Charles and Grand Meadow before Stewartville had full-time athletic training coverage.
He would see athletes throughout the day, in the morning and afternoon before working event coverage in the evenings.
Christoffer said Rochester Public Schools uses a tiered approach to contracting athletic training coverage, with a priority on contact sports.
"In the spring you'll have a lacrosse game, and you may have a baseball and a softball game going on at the same time," Christoffer said. "Lacrosse is more of a contact sport, so lacrosse would have the priority, and so we'd have the athletic trainer at the lacrosse event, and then basically on call for the baseball and softball. ...
"If we have a hockey game and a basketball game on the same night, the priority would be to go to hockey."
Ensuring care when it matters most
Miranda Hayek, the Director of Rehab Services for WinnMed, emphasized the importance of rural schools developing strong partnerships to provide trainers through contracts and ensure athletes receive medical care when it matters most. These schools can also work to share a trainer with a nearby school, using resources wisely. She added schools can have emergency action plans in place for times when a trainer is unavailable at a practice or sporting event.
"A collaborative approach between schools and healthcare organizations can help ensure student-athletes have access to appropriate medical expertise, injury prevention services, and emergency care regardless of where they live," Hayek said.
These emergency action plans include training coaches and EMTs on how to handle concussions, neck and spine injuries, as well as how to use an AED.
During the summer, Mills and his co-workers help train local paramedics in Minnesota and Wisconsin on how to remove football pads in the case of C-spine fractures and other situations. Mills also helps revise and update concussion procedures and policies for Gundersen.
"Having people understand what we do and how to do things, and not that they're going to replace us necessarily, but if and when we're not there, they are able to handle them (emergencies) appropriately," Mills said. "I've just kind of accumulated all these little extra things that I do to help the community ... to help kind of account for the shortage of staff that we have, just kind of ensure that all the kids are getting the care that they need. Safety of the student athletes is first and foremost, kind of our biggest thing."
Morken is equipped to handle her workload and therefore doesn't feel the shortage as much, but she said she sees the lack of athletic trainers at other schools in the area.
"It's just really recognizing the role that we play, and how important we are and then making it work, whether it's financially or forming a partnership with a medical facility," Morken said. "And every area is going to look different."
As a larger district, Rochester Public Schools has a contract with Mayo Clinic for its athletic trainers. Christoffer reiterated the importance of preparing coaches and staff to handle injuries in emergencies and said RPS has plans in place.
"Athletic trainers do a tremendous job in all our schools, and they play a vital role in what we do in our sports, and provide a tremendous service to all of our families and coaches," Christoffer said. "It's something that is definitely needed, and we couldn't do as good of a job with our sports, I don't think in this area, without athletic trainers."
Looking back, Gasper said he doesn't think an athletic trainer could have changed the outcome of his injury, but he worries about other athletes who might not be as lucky as he was on that day in 2023.
"I worry about someone in a similar situation to me who didn't have that good Samaritan that happened to be a medical professional in the crowd and just had people around them that know what they're doing," Gasper said. "And that, in my mind, is what the athletic trainer is there for, to be kind of a voice of reason ... and make sure that treating the injury is done properly, especially in these emergency, freak accidents that I unfortunately had to go through."
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There was no athletic trainer on site.
The 2024 Dover-Eyota grad was performing a headlock on his opponent when his arm got caught behind him. Gasper and his opponent fell to the ground, essentially dropping 400 pounds on the back of his neck. He heard a crunch and knew something was wrong instantly.
It's been more than three years since Gasper was injured on Feb. 4, 2023, but he still remembers the events of that day vividly.
For 30 minutes, Gasper was on the mat on his back waiting for an ambulance to arrive. He remembers staring up at the bright lights on the gymnasium ceiling, worried because he felt numbness and tingling throughout his body below his neck.
Since an athletic trainer was not present at the tournament, Dover-Eyota wrestling coach Brian Lehnertz, a volunteer firefighter with EMT training, came out to the mat to check on him. An emergency room nurse in the crowd came down from the stands and stabilized his C-spine for 45 minutes.
"She probably saved my life," Gasper said. "I'm not going to lie."
Gasper had surgery the next morning at Mayo Clinic to fix an unstable C6 cervical spinal fracture.
"There was a chunk of bone that had broken off from my spine that was pressed up against blood vessels that were under my brain," he said.
Gasper, 20, has since made a full recovery, which included working with D-E's athletic trainer Shauna Hoff, who is employed through Mayo Clinic. Gasper is heading into his senior year at the University of Northern Iowa, where he is on a pre-med track. He is currently an intern in the surgery department at Mayo Clinic.
After his injury, Gasper considered pursuing a career in athletic training, but ultimately decided against it due to the cost of school and demanding work schedule, all for little pay.
A shortage of athletic trainers
The Post Bulletin polled 40 activities directors in southeastern Minnesota and received responses from just more than half of them. Respondents cited the most common obstacles to staffing an athletic trainer were budgetary constraints and a limited pool of candidates. A few others said their school's geographic location and high turnover rates were challenges.
Of the 21 responses, 100% have a partnership with Mayo Clinic or another local hospital/clinic, while nine ADs answered that they share their athletic trainer with one or more schools.
Owen Mills, an athletic trainer contracted with local high schools and Viterbo University, is employed by Gundersen Health System in La Crosse, Wis. Mills, who is licensed in both Minnesota and Wisconsin, has served as the athletic trainer for Houston Public Schools for two and a half years.
Due to his "demanding" workload, Mills is transitioning out of his role as the AT for Houston High School to focus on his other schools, and the La Crescent-Hokah athletic trainer will be taking over his responsibilities. Gundersen used to cover Caledonia, but had to cut the school from its contract. Event coverage for Houston was also cut due to a lack of available trainers.
Mills is one of 15 full-time athletic trainers employed by Gundersen, and six are dual-licensed. Mills has seen high turnover rates firsthand. In the five years he's worked for Gundersen, he's seen more than 20 athletic trainers cycle through.
"It's not ATs leaving to go to other AT jobs," Mills said. "It's ATs leaving the profession as a whole, because no one wants to work 50 hours minimum a week on evenings and weekends and stuff like that for not a ton of money. It's just not a very fun job unless you really like watching sports."
Mills went to high school in Michigan's Upper Peninsula before getting both his bachelor's and master's degrees at Northern Michigan University. His high school in rural Michigan did not have an athletic trainer.
"That's honestly kind of why I'm an AT now," Mills said. "I used to live in a town that was smaller than Houston is, and we never had any services like that."
With an enrollment of about 150 high school students, Mills said he would not be able to find 40 hours' worth of work to do at Houston High School each week. He said several students would benefit from seeing him more than two or three hours per week in the training room, but the number of students and the cost make it hard to justify the district paying for a full-time trainer.
Another obstacle is the education required to become an athletic trainer.
The National Athletic Trainers' Association's Athletic Training Strategic Alliance started requiring new athletic training students to obtain a master's degree before they are eligible for the Board of Certification exam, as of 2022.
"It's just hard to get people to be willing to work at a rural secondary school like that for the amount you're getting paid, especially when they have a master's degree and don't want to work for 25, 30, 35 grand a year," Mills said. "Especially with the cost of living, it's just not sustainable."
The life of an athletic trainer
Jess Morken works for WinnMed, out of Decorah, Iowa, and splits her time as the athletic trainer for both Mabel-Canton and Spring Grove. She is one of four full-time athletic trainers for WinnMed. There are also two part-time trainers on staff.
Every Friday in the fall, Morken tapes ankles for the starters on the Mabel-Canton and Spring Grove football teams before games, about 18-20 ankles per team, no matter if the teams are home or away. It's a task she's happy to take on alone instead of letting it fall to a coach or one of her coworkers, since she knows her athletes best.
"Time management is a key part of athletic training anyway, but Friday nights, it gets a little trickier," Morken said.
She starts her day in the WinnMed physical therapy clinic before heading to Mabel-Canton to see athletes who ask to be seen after practice or games the night before. After lunch, Morken goes to Spring Grove and sees students after school and during practices. Depending on the day of the week, she covers games and events as well.
Athletic trainers work during the day but also work nights and weekends. Sometimes they even work when they're not scheduled to.
Last winter, Morken was at home sick. She received a FaceTime call during a Mabel-Canton basketball game and learned one of the players had been injured. Some parents in the crowd who are in the medical field wanted another opinion and called Morken.
She evaluated a broken wrist over the phone.
Another time, Morken received a call when she was on vacation in the Dominican Republic.
"I wasn't going to answer it, but they called twice, so I thought 'I'd better,'" Morken said. "My coaches trust me, and so if there's not an athletic trainer (at an away game), they are more than welcome to call me and ask me, even if I'm on vacation, I guess. Not every athletic trainer will answer the phone, obviously, but it comes to how comfortable you are."
Morken sets boundaries in her position, but since she is a Spring Grove resident and her own kids are in the district, she is friends with parents of the athletes she works with.
"I'm part of both of these communities, and I feel welcome, and part of the community, and part of that is just being friends with the people that are calling," Morken said.
She said she manages fine and doesn't feel "overwhelmed." Some weeks she works four or five events, and others she only works two. If Morken is at a Mabel-Canton sporting event and an athlete is injured at a Spring Grove game, she will simply leave one school and head to the other since the towns are about a 10-minute drive apart.
"I feel really blessed to work for where I do, and for the school systems I do, but it's not always the case, and so that could definitely be a reason for the shortage, too," Morken said. "It can be overwhelming for one athletic trainer to cover a (Class) 5A school when they have multiple varsity events going on each night. You'd feel stretched thin, I feel."
Mills and Morken said they love what they do, but they agree it's a demanding profession and it's not for everyone.
"I kind of describe it as controlled chaos," Mills said. "You have to be good at multitasking. Even at Viterbo, there will be times where I'm doing soft tissue on somebody, I'm hooking up someone to E-Stim, while I'm writing up a rehab and eating a slice of pizza all at the same time. ... There is just so much to do all the time, and it kind of wears you down."
Mayo High School Activities Director Dan Christoffer is a former Mayo Clinic athletic trainer who is still licensed. When Christoffer was an athletic trainer for Mayo Clinic, he was responsible for Stewartville, St. Charles and Grand Meadow before Stewartville had full-time athletic training coverage.
He would see athletes throughout the day, in the morning and afternoon before working event coverage in the evenings.
Christoffer said Rochester Public Schools uses a tiered approach to contracting athletic training coverage, with a priority on contact sports.
"In the spring you'll have a lacrosse game, and you may have a baseball and a softball game going on at the same time," Christoffer said. "Lacrosse is more of a contact sport, so lacrosse would have the priority, and so we'd have the athletic trainer at the lacrosse event, and then basically on call for the baseball and softball. ...
"If we have a hockey game and a basketball game on the same night, the priority would be to go to hockey."
Ensuring care when it matters most
Miranda Hayek, the Director of Rehab Services for WinnMed, emphasized the importance of rural schools developing strong partnerships to provide trainers through contracts and ensure athletes receive medical care when it matters most. These schools can also work to share a trainer with a nearby school, using resources wisely. She added schools can have emergency action plans in place for times when a trainer is unavailable at a practice or sporting event.
"A collaborative approach between schools and healthcare organizations can help ensure student-athletes have access to appropriate medical expertise, injury prevention services, and emergency care regardless of where they live," Hayek said.
These emergency action plans include training coaches and EMTs on how to handle concussions, neck and spine injuries, as well as how to use an AED.
During the summer, Mills and his co-workers help train local paramedics in Minnesota and Wisconsin on how to remove football pads in the case of C-spine fractures and other situations. Mills also helps revise and update concussion procedures and policies for Gundersen.
"Having people understand what we do and how to do things, and not that they're going to replace us necessarily, but if and when we're not there, they are able to handle them (emergencies) appropriately," Mills said. "I've just kind of accumulated all these little extra things that I do to help the community ... to help kind of account for the shortage of staff that we have, just kind of ensure that all the kids are getting the care that they need. Safety of the student athletes is first and foremost, kind of our biggest thing."
Morken is equipped to handle her workload and therefore doesn't feel the shortage as much, but she said she sees the lack of athletic trainers at other schools in the area.
"It's just really recognizing the role that we play, and how important we are and then making it work, whether it's financially or forming a partnership with a medical facility," Morken said. "And every area is going to look different."
As a larger district, Rochester Public Schools has a contract with Mayo Clinic for its athletic trainers. Christoffer reiterated the importance of preparing coaches and staff to handle injuries in emergencies and said RPS has plans in place.
"Athletic trainers do a tremendous job in all our schools, and they play a vital role in what we do in our sports, and provide a tremendous service to all of our families and coaches," Christoffer said. "It's something that is definitely needed, and we couldn't do as good of a job with our sports, I don't think in this area, without athletic trainers."
Looking back, Gasper said he doesn't think an athletic trainer could have changed the outcome of his injury, but he worries about other athletes who might not be as lucky as he was on that day in 2023.
"I worry about someone in a similar situation to me who didn't have that good Samaritan that happened to be a medical professional in the crowd and just had people around them that know what they're doing," Gasper said. "And that, in my mind, is what the athletic trainer is there for, to be kind of a voice of reason ... and make sure that treating the injury is done properly, especially in these emergency, freak accidents that I unfortunately had to go through."
Continue reading...
