The UTRGV Sports Medicine Department oversees the education of student athletic trainers who help provide fitness and strength training for student athletes.
Steven Kraus, associate athletic director of Sports Medicine, oversees four assistant athletic trainers and all student trainers. Kraus supervises the operations of three training rooms, works directly with student athletes and coaches, and coordinates all aspects of sports medicine.
“Our program’s primarily observation-based, so what we really try to push, initially, is a lot of modality and rehab use,” Kraus said. “Because that is a lot of what they do on a day-to-day basis, [as well as] develop rehab programs and protocols that, depending on whether it’s preventative or whether there’s [a] certain injury going on, then we usually teach those movements or teach the modality and [that] can help kind of delegate a lot of those protocols and programs for the students to begin to start managing on their own.”
He said the expectation is to “come ready to learn.”
“I really tried to push the students to try to pick up something new every day, if they can,” Kraus said. “I want them to ask me questions. … Sometimes there’s not going to be new injuries, but it doesn’t mean there’s not other things that can’t be picked up or asked and be learned.”
Kraus said students enter the program with different levels of experience and that they accommodate all levels of knowledge.
“So, we get students that enter our program with the least amount of knowledge and a good amount of knowledge,” he said. “We have to adapt our teaching style and our learning styles based off of the level of students we have.”
Kinesiology senior Karen Sanchez is a student athletic trainer for volleyball and baseball and has been a trainer for three years.
“In the future, I would like to work for the soccer teams,” Sanchez said. “I’ve learned that I have to maintain my self-calm because, first, I like to put the athletes as a priority. … And then if I’m calm, they’re calm. So, that’s how I like to keep it. Just stay calm.”
She plans to have a career in sports medicine and wants to use the skills she is learning in her future career.
“I would like to, in the future, know how to create accurate rehab plans or, when I decide to look for a future job … recognize and evaluate injuries,” Sanchez said. “I’ve always liked sports, as well as medicine. So I decided to combine them both. And this was my decision, to join this program, this internship. I like that I can interact with the athletes as well as care for them.”
Kinesiology junior Jason Zaragoza is a student athletic trainer for the women’s cross-country and track and field teams, and the men’s soccer team.
“I started athletic training as a student aide in high school,” Zaragoza said. “It was the only [medically centered] program in my high school after they took away the [Health Occupations Students of America] program that we had. So that’s where I got my foot in the door, and ever since then, I’ve been part of athletic training.”
He said he relies on former trainers’ knowledge to bounce ideas off of and to ask them questions he may have.
“Really, I rely a lot on my predecessors,” Zaragoza said. “So, really, just bouncing ideas off of them and just listening to their opinions. And then just, kind of, just going from there. I hope to gain knowledge in the athletic training profession as far as, like, evaluation skills, therapeutic interventions, rehabilitation and things like that.”
