Moments after the afternoon bell, the athletic training room is filled with rehabilitating athletes. Student athletes wait their turn to be treated for their injury while others get a report on whether they can practice and how intense that practice can be.

The room has four beds for injured athletes. As the student athletes sit or lay on top the beds, their injured limbs are stretched or have ice placed on them. A football player lays on the bed moaning and grimacing in pain as his leg was stretched. Others lift small weights to work their injured wrists or arms.

Football players with ankle sprains, shoulder injuries, leg injuries, and concussions fill the room, all vying for head athletic trainer Stacy Schurr’s assistance. The trainers bustle around the room, filling bags of ice or coming to treat the injured.

Athletic Trainers (ATs) give therapeutic treatment to a person who has sustained an injury. They tell the person what they should and should not do to allow the injury to heal as quickly and correctly as possible. AT’s also help prevent people from becoming injured by having clinics.

Schurr has an exercise science degree with a major in athletic training from UVA. She has passed a certification exam in order to qualify as an athletic trainer and must be recertified annually.

She is also currently working at ACAC as a trainer. Schurr said what inspired her to become a trainer was that she loves sports and helping people, and had also been injured before. “I have had three knee surgeries,” Schurr said. “Working with the kids”, was what Schurr said was her favorite part about being an AT.

Sophomore cheerleader Lauren Love, who has an injured wrist, goes to treat the injury at the athletic trainer. She said every practice she has to stretch it out and also lift weights with the injured wrist.

Sophomore Landon Alston, a quarterback for the j.v. football team, broke his thumb during practice. “I was going to hand the ball off to the running back and the fullback ran into it,” Alston said. ”They [ATs] iced it and then I had to go to the ER because it was so swollen I had to have surgery.”

”She [Christina Hollis] helped me with my splint; she did everything she could do for me.”

Sophomore wrestler Nick Carpenter had a broken wrist last year. He said that the athletic trainers tried to help by putting ice on the wrist. He also had to use hand squeezer to exercise his wrist. “My hand started to turn blue so I had to go to the hospital to get an x-ray.” Carpenter says

Freshman football player Lyndsay Mundie, suffered a torn meniscus and patellar tendonitis. She says at the athletic trainers she stretches the leg, and strengthens the muscles around it. “She’s amazing, both of them are. They are helpful, and they want the best for you.”