Columbus North athletic trainer Ashley Martin bandages Blake Huffman’s knee before the Bull Dogs’ game against East Central in the first round of the Bloomington North baseball sectional, Wednesday, May 26, 2021.
Paige Grider | For The Republic
Columbus North athletic trainers Kate Cockerham and Ashley Martin are recipients of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association Safe Sports School award by the NATA.
The award promotes safety and recognizes schools that provide a safe environment for its student athletes. It also recognizes the importance of providing the best level of care, injury prevention and treatment.
This is the first time North has received the award. Martin has been an athletic trainer at North since 2016, and Cockerham started at North as an athletic trainer last summer.
“Since I’ve been here, that was one of my goals was to get that,” Martin said. “I was excited when Kate came on because I knew that was one of her goals, too. I’ve been wanting to do something like this for us and for our program as a whole as CRH (Columbus Regional Health) athletic trainers to get this done.”
Cockerham said they go through the application by checking “yes” or “no” on descriptions of following each procedure. Once the application is completed, it is signed by the school principal or athletic director and an athletic trainer or team physician. Then, they send it in to the NATA, which then awards schools with first- or second-team status.
Martin and Cockerham heard back from the NATA during the evening of the boys basketball regular-season finale against Center Grove Feb. 24 that they received the award. North was awarded the first team award. So far this year, 20 schools in the nation have achieved the first-team award and one school with the second-team award.
Since it’s more of a research project for NATA, schools have to pay to apply for the award. Cockerham said the Great Lakes Athletics Training Association offers grants to help pay for the first award. They ended up applying for that first. Once they got the grant, they applied for Safe Sports School award.
“Any secondary school in the nation can apply for it,” Cockerham said. “GLATA only gives out 40 grants each year. Once we received the grant, we applied to NATA immediately.”
First team is awarded to schools that act on all the required and the recommended elements. Second team is awarded to schools that only complete the required elements. The Safe Sports School award lasts for three years before renewing again.
“We’ve done the things that meet the minimum requirement, and we’ve done even more since we got the first team,” Martin said. “It’s really cool. It’s something that really shows we provide good quality care.”
In order to achieve Safe Sport School status, programs must create a positive athletic health care administrative system; provide pre-participation exams; promote safe practice and competition facilities; plan selection, fit function and proper maintenance of athletic equipment; provide an appropriate permanent equipped area to evaluate and treat injured athletes; develop injury and illness prevention strategies; provide or facilitate injury intervention; create and rehearse a venue specific Emergency Action Plan; provide psychosocial consultation and nutrition counseling; be sure athletes and parents are educated of the potential benefits and risks in sports as well as their responsibilities.
“The biggest part is that it helps get our name out there, not really just us, but as athletic trainers in general so the public understands that we’re not here just taping ankles or getting band-aids, we actually do provide health care coverage,” Cockerham said. “That helps get people asking questions about our profession and recognizing athletic trainers in the secondary school setting.”
