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Two Saturday’s ago, it seemed that Michigan Wolverines head football coach Brady Hoke had made a questionable and, what some would call, bone-headed decision.
After his sophomore quarterback Shane Morris appeared to have suffered a concussion on a hard hit to the head, Hoke left him in for the next play. Uproar immediately spread throughout the University and all over sports news for what Hoke had done.
People, specifically students, are now going as far as wanting both Hoke and Michigan’s athletic director, Dave Brandon, fired.
“I don’t think we know all the facts,” said DePauw football coach Bill Lynch. “Brady Hoke… is a good friend of mine, and I know that he would never put a player in harm’s way.”
Hoke was later quoted saying that “we would never-ever put a guy on the field when there’s a possibility with head trauma," according to www.npr.org.
Regardless of who is to blame for what happened, the incident at Michigan draws significant importance to how an athlete’s body should be cared for, whether it’s after a concussion, ACL tear, or something worse.
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DePauw has taken the steps to make sure that events like what happened to Morris won’t happen to Tiger student-athletes thanks to the Sports Medicine Program.
Headed overall by Rex Call, the program consists of five certified athletic trainers and two team physicians.
“With our athletics staff and coaches, student-athlete safety and well-being are of paramount importance,” DePauw athletic director Stevie Baker-Watson said. For that reason, our coaches respect the opinions of our team physicians and sports medicine staff when it comes to return to play.”
Lynch agreed.
“I think [the program] is imperative,” Lynch said. “As coaches, we are all totally supportive of that, and we have a well-defined concussion protocol here that we follow.”
That protocol includes detailed education on the signs and symptoms of concussions that coaches receive before the start of every season.
But for many, the concept of having any type of sports medicine program at a university has come a long way over the past thirty years.
“While teams have always had someone perform ‘stereotypical’ roles, like providing water, athletic training evolved into a profession in the early 1970s,” Baker-Watson said. “Education began including human and exercise physiology, injury management and physical rehabilitation.”
In regards to education, sports medicine programs in general can provide students with great experience and opportunities.
“I think students who are in the sports medicine program might gain some insight if they are considering careers in the medical field,” Dr. Scott Ripple, who serves as the Director of the Wellness Center and the University Team Physician, said.
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Unfortunately, in DePauw’s case, a student can’t directly participate in the sports medicine program. But any position in the program is a valid career option for DePauw students interested in sports medicine. To pursue this career, the student would need to be accepted into an accredited graduate program in athletic training. The accrediting body is called CAATE.
Injuries in sports will always happen, but the Sports Medicine Program makes sure coaches and trainers alike get it right when it comes to treating the 550 DePauw student-athletes on campus.
For more information on the Sports Medicine Program, visit DePauw’s athletics website.