All five high schools in the Fremont Unified School District will get athletic trainers this fall in addition to those assigned to their football teams.
The school board voted unanimously June 28 to approve a three-year contract with Washington Hospital Healthcare System for the services of part-time athletic trainers at four of the campuses and a full-time trainer at Irvington High School. Except for football teams, which are required by state law to have athletic trainers at their games, sports teams haven’t consistently been served by trainers in recent years.
Fremont Unified School District will pay $187,000 for the trainers and Washington Hospital $412,634. The school will also pick up the tab for supplies, such as tape and bandages, which will tack about $32,500 more onto the cost.
Washington Hospital Healthcare System also will receive some free advertising, possibly in the form of banners or signs on playing fields or in gyms during sporting events.
Although the school district must make cuts over the next few years to account for a $23 million budget shortfall, Irvington High School Athletic Director Michelle Stone said more athletic trainers are long overdue and will be a boon for the high schools.
“To me we’re behind the times,” she said, noting many other school districts have trainers on staff at all their campuses.
“It’s a such a help to the coaches, having an athletic trainer. They’re able to coach more,” she added.
Six years ago, the hospital started a pilot program by funding one part-time athletic trainer at Irvington High School, according to hospital officials. The next year, it expanded the program to American and Washington high schools, though Kennedy and Mission San Jose high schools never got trainers assigned to their campuses.
Because of budget cuts, however, the hospital scaled back to just one trainer for the three schools until last year, though it did ensure a trainer was at all five schools’ home football games.
Under the new contract, Carmen Charleston, the program’s full-time head athletic trainer, will continue her work at Irvington and oversee the other four high school trainers.
Stone said Charleston has been invaluable to the school. “The best part about this now is knowing we’re not going to have to worry in May ‘Is she coming back in June for the next year?,'” Stone added.
Charleston said athletic trainers spend some of their time at games and practices tending to injuries and examining players and other times helping athletes recover from injuries in the training rooms.
“It’s the big life-threatening injuries that make the news, but the ones that really affect kids mentally, physically…are the nagging ones,” Charleston said. “The ones that don’t ever get better, that pull a kid out of a season. It could have been prevented or it could have been fixed and then prevented.”
Charleston said she’s glad more trainers will be added, which should ensure “no athlete falls through the cracks.”
Asked why he thought the district should spend more for athletic trainers despite an austere budget year, Greg Bailey, the district’s head of secondary education, cited increased awareness about the severity and long-term effects injuries can have on athletes.
“I think the time was just right with Washington Hospital to come in and do their little sales pitch,” he said.
When needed, the hospital will help get student athletes seen by doctors quickly at either its facilities or at a local Kaiser Permanente center, officials said. The hospital agreed to a similar contract with Newark Memorial High School, though it’s only for one year.
Gisela Hernandez, a spokeswoman for the hospital, said providing trainers coincides with the community hospital’s mission of creating more access to care. “The athletic trainers at local high schools are making high school sports in the community safer,” she said.
