With over 6,000 visits from injured students per year, and 50 to 70 athletes seen a day over a 10-month school year, immediate professional medical attention is priceless.

The sports medicine department at DVC has a clinical team of 17 students who work with athletes on caring for their injuries both during and after games. While the degree program has been at DVC for about 10 years, Program Director Michael Chisar started the internship portion of the program in 1995.

DVC currently has 17 sports teams, accounting for roughly 350 student-athletes.

“Our athletes compete in the toughest league in Northern California,” athletic director Christine Worsley said, “Every weekend our kids are playing at a very high level.” The clinical program covers everything from injury prevention, providing an evaluation of diagnosis, acute management, emergency management, rehab and the return to activity.

With such a high volume of student athletes needing day-to-day treatment, the student athletic trainers play a vital role keeping the program running smoothly as possible.

”Without our student athletic trainers helping out, we’d probably only see about 15-20 kids a day,” Program Adviser Wendy Holt said. That would result in more than half of the student athletes that the clinic sees on an average day going to see an expensive sports therapist somewhere else. Wendy supervises everyone’s work in the clinic and recognizes who needs urgent care at that time. The entire adviser staff is made up of actual certified athletic trainers, so students on the clinical team get a chance to apply what they have learned in the classroom to real life cases.

“It’s a really great experience, you get to learn hands on and meet new students,” said third semester student Jeanette Vasquez.

“We have a lot of different responsibilities, massages, stretching, ultrasounds, making sure our players are hydrated throughout the game and managing the first aid equipment”.

Why would it be a good idea to join the clinical team here at DVC? Third semester student Christina Brekelmans already has a bachelor’s degree, she explains how important it is to get clinical hours before applying to an athletic training master’s program.

“Whether it is a master’s or bachelor’s program, getting the hours is huge. Colleges know you’re going to be good in their program because you are prepared.”

Many students want to go into a career dealing with healthcare; here, DVC students are getting the hours that they need to apply. They’re getting the classroom education to prepare for classes at a four-year school, and they handle all of the prerequisites that they need for that program as they complete the four semester program.

It is very competitive at the four-year level and, in order to become an athletic trainer, you need a bachelor’s degree to sit for the certification exam. The DVC clinical program prepares students to go to the next level and apply to those impacted bachelor programs.

According to Chisar, the students always get into the program that they want because all of the experience and coursework that they go through. Their impressive resumes move their applications to the top of the admissions pile.