Are coaches putting their athletes back in the game without healed injuries?
Student athletes get injured, it happens.
“Depending on the injury,” Phil Racicot, Keene State College Athletic Director, said, “lower upper body injury would be handled a little bit differently than, say, a head injury.”
“Post-injury or post-game, the trainer would provide some instruction to the student athlete, which typically would involve, again, depending on the severity of the injury, would involve a course of treatment over the next several days or weeks,” Racicot said.
Racicot continued, “In other words, they don’t get to decide on their own… if there’s been an injury where they had to be assessed or anything to that nature, then it becomes the decision of the medical staff.”
Racicot also said that coaches will not let injured players play.
“We talk to our coaches all the time, about what the processes are, from that standpoint, and again, anything that’s medically related, the decision about whether someone plays or doesn’t play rests within the hands of the team physician, or the athletic trainers under the direction of the team physician,” Racicot said.
At a men’s soccer game, a student was seen playing with a cast on. Racicot noted that playing with a cast on is okay.
Racicot elaborated, “Sometimes you’ll see students wear a cast that is wrapped in bubble wrap, but it is permitted, okay to do that. I actually, my own daughter played soccer, and she played with a cast on for a while. And then the tricky part is when you get the cast off, you have a period of time where it may not be safe for you to play, and actually, I’ve seen people actually put casts back on in order to play.”
Alex Kennedy, a women’s soccer player, was recently injured at a game.
“At first, I was kind of in denial that I got injured. And then after I could not run in anything like it just kept hurting and stuff. So then I went to the athletic trainer, and then we did P.T. (Physical Therapy) stuff for it,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy said the athletic trainers told her the more rest, the better. “I just tried to listen to them and then was also like, I want to play some. I decided on my own one game [that] I was fine. And then I really wasn’t. And then I re-injured it and stuff,” Kennedy said. She also noted that she took more time off because of this.
Kennedy noted that based on what hurt and where the injury was, “they (the athletic trainers) just said it was like a strain, a hamstring strain.”
There are three athletic trainers listed on keeneowls.com, two of which had emails posted publicly. The two trainers with emails listed said they were not interested in being interviewed.
