This past weekend our senior athletic training class participated in the preparation and management of a three-day Amateur Athletic Union Youth Wrestling tournament. We were in charge of creating a Policies and Procedures manual and then putting it into action during the event. My initial reaction to this was nervous and anxious. At this point, I have never experienced wrestling and I did not know much about the sport. I was nervous to go to the event. In the creation of the Policies and Procedure manual, it was clear we did not know what to do. We had created a mock Policies and Procedure manual before, but to create one specifically for this event with a sport I had little knowledge on was daunting. I was glad to go through this process because I know there are many schools and programs out there that do not have policies and procedure manuals for their sports departments and one day I may be in charge of creating a manual. I think what was specifically difficult is as a class we did not have one uniform vision for our manual and therefore it was very disorganized and incoherent. We ended up meeting one night as a group to rework every section and by the end of the night we came up with a pretty uniform manual. At the end of the night we knew what we were and were not going to do for our population and we were able to apply it.
The first day of the tournament we get there and the whole gym is filled with kids everywhere. This is a different population than we were used to working with. All of our patients were between the age of 5 and 12. We took a minute to figure out where everything was and we just sprang into action to get the mats set up. We set up cleaning supplies at every mat and put water up in the gym. While this seems simple, I think something important about setting up is that we were not told to do this. We just knew things had to be set up and we went with it.
Eventually the rounds started and the action began. I had never experienced wrestling before. I especially have never seen little 5-year-old boys wrestle. I was thrown off at first by how aggressive some boys were and how others were not. The first day, most of the things I took care of were little ones crying because they were scared more than anything. This was a learning experience because there was no structural damage. They kids were just being pulled in strange directions and did not know how interpret their pain. Eventually, I got used to the kids torqueing each other in strange directions and only would be nervous if they did not get up for a minute.
The one stand out moment of the weekend was me being told what to do by a coach. This was definitely one of the most frustrating things I have experienced as an athletic training student. A kid had come off the mat for a severe nose bleed. I had instructed him to pinch his nose and lean forward to slow the bleed some. I did this because I did not want the nose plug to fill and fall out on the mat in 10 seconds. The boy had given me some attitude, but I shrugged this off. Then a coach came next to me and was screaming at me that “I did not know what I was doing” and “I was not taking care of the boy right”. I was irritated and was a little snappy with the coach and asked if he wanted his kid to wrestle or not? From here on out the situation became absurd. The coach kept running his mouth saying irrelevant things and continued to tell me I was doing things wrong. He then took my supplies out of my hand and commanded me to look at him. I am not a subservient dog so ignored him. He then started to nudge me to get my attention, screaming “look at me”, “this is how you do it”. He tried to nudge me again and I was mad and I elbowed his hand to assert myself. He knew that I was not going to tolerate him anymore after that. He continued to degrade me as I cleaned the blood of the boy and I was absolutely infuriated at this point. The only thing I was thinking during the whole situation was “do not curse in front of this kid”, and “do not curse on the camera” that was live feeding the event. I kept to those thoughts because I knew that was the most professional thing I could do. After the situation was handled I had to leave the room to gather myself and get my frustrations out. As irritating as this experience was, I think I handled it the best I could have and maintained my professionalism. The coach definitely cannot say the same for himself. If I were to have this situation happen again, I would want to assert myself more verbally, but in a situation this intense I knew the things that would have come out of my mouth would have been inappropriate. Besides this unfortunate learning experience, I had a lot of fun at the tournament and things ran smoothly with limited injuries.
This was a good experience to have. I think our whole class did a great job preparing for the event which was rewarded by fantastic comments from our supervising athletic trainers at the event. I do not believe the event could have ran any smoother than it did from the athletic training aspect.
My takeaways from this event are that I now have experience with wrestling; I experienced a difficult encounter and know what I would do differently next time; and I know what is included in the creating of a policies and procedure manual. All of these are skills that I know I will use in the near future upon being hired as an athletic trainer. This was a valuable experience and I look forward to working with wrestling in my future career.
The first day of the tournament we get there and the whole gym is filled with kids everywhere. This is a different population than we were used to working with. All of our patients were between the age of 5 and 12. We took a minute to figure out where everything was and we just sprang into action to get the mats set up. We set up cleaning supplies at every mat and put water up in the gym. While this seems simple, I think something important about setting up is that we were not told to do this. We just knew things had to be set up and we went with it.
Eventually the rounds started and the action began. I had never experienced wrestling before. I especially have never seen little 5-year-old boys wrestle. I was thrown off at first by how aggressive some boys were and how others were not. The first day, most of the things I took care of were little ones crying because they were scared more than anything. This was a learning experience because there was no structural damage. They kids were just being pulled in strange directions and did not know how interpret their pain. Eventually, I got used to the kids torqueing each other in strange directions and only would be nervous if they did not get up for a minute.
The one stand out moment of the weekend was me being told what to do by a coach. This was definitely one of the most frustrating things I have experienced as an athletic training student. A kid had come off the mat for a severe nose bleed. I had instructed him to pinch his nose and lean forward to slow the bleed some. I did this because I did not want the nose plug to fill and fall out on the mat in 10 seconds. The boy had given me some attitude, but I shrugged this off. Then a coach came next to me and was screaming at me that “I did not know what I was doing” and “I was not taking care of the boy right”. I was irritated and was a little snappy with the coach and asked if he wanted his kid to wrestle or not? From here on out the situation became absurd. The coach kept running his mouth saying irrelevant things and continued to tell me I was doing things wrong. He then took my supplies out of my hand and commanded me to look at him. I am not a subservient dog so ignored him. He then started to nudge me to get my attention, screaming “look at me”, “this is how you do it”. He tried to nudge me again and I was mad and I elbowed his hand to assert myself. He knew that I was not going to tolerate him anymore after that. He continued to degrade me as I cleaned the blood of the boy and I was absolutely infuriated at this point. The only thing I was thinking during the whole situation was “do not curse in front of this kid”, and “do not curse on the camera” that was live feeding the event. I kept to those thoughts because I knew that was the most professional thing I could do. After the situation was handled I had to leave the room to gather myself and get my frustrations out. As irritating as this experience was, I think I handled it the best I could have and maintained my professionalism. The coach definitely cannot say the same for himself. If I were to have this situation happen again, I would want to assert myself more verbally, but in a situation this intense I knew the things that would have come out of my mouth would have been inappropriate. Besides this unfortunate learning experience, I had a lot of fun at the tournament and things ran smoothly with limited injuries.
This was a good experience to have. I think our whole class did a great job preparing for the event which was rewarded by fantastic comments from our supervising athletic trainers at the event. I do not believe the event could have ran any smoother than it did from the athletic training aspect.
My takeaways from this event are that I now have experience with wrestling; I experienced a difficult encounter and know what I would do differently next time; and I know what is included in the creating of a policies and procedure manual. All of these are skills that I know I will use in the near future upon being hired as an athletic trainer. This was a valuable experience and I look forward to working with wrestling in my future career.