Endless hours reap benefits for trainer

Tanya Baroutsis schedules her classes in the morning. She has to in order to be at Rec Hall's training room at 2:30 p.m. every day.

There she stays until 6:30 p.m. -- after all the athletes, bundled with ice packs taped to their shoulders and knees, have left.

She usually arrives on time to a row of empty training tables and the humming sound of an ice machine. She is a student trainer, an integral but often over-looked part of the women's volleyball team.

Baroutsis (junior-exercise and sport science) wants to be an athletic trainer some day. But in order to do that she must spend a lot of time in Rec Hall's training room. Eight hundred hours, in fact.

That's the amount of time the National Athletic Trainer's Association has mandated for students to be eligible to take the athletic trainer's exam.

Still, Baroutsis estimates by the time she graduates she'll have spent 1,000 to 1,500 hours with various athletic teams.

This is Baroutsis' third semester with the Penn State's Athletic Training Curriculum Program. Hours she spends in the training room and classes are mandated by the NATA.

So far, Baroutsis has spent close to 600 hours student training but isn't bothered by the time she commits.

"This major is incredible," she said. "You're working hands-on with athletes. I couldn't ask for anything more."

Baroutsis said she couldn't ask for anything more to do.

"We struggle with the amount of people to work with," she says. "There's so much that goes on . . ."

Her voice begins fading as she follows a late-coming women's volleyball player into South Gym.

"Oh, someone needs to be taped," she says.

Melissa Moyer, a fellow student trainer of the women's volleyball team, agrees that student-training responsibilities are demanding but reasonable.

"That's what athletic trainers do," she said. "It's a good opportunity to find out what it is like."

While student trainers can't diagnose injuries, they may observe and offer prognosis. Moyer recalled with delight her first correct prognosis.

The injury, she said, was "very simple." It was an anterior telefibular sprain, something she had just learned a week ago in her mechanism of injury class.

"Eight times out of 10 it will be what I thought it was, which is so cool," she said with a dazzle appearing in her eye.

The 31-year-old Moyer said she decided she wanted to be an athletic trainer after she graduated from Penn State with a master's degree in health and physical education in 1989.

Now she is accumulating hours and should have enough to sit for the NATA exam in June. Moyer, intrigued by her work, likens athletic training to a game.

"The human body becomes a puzzle," she said. "It's almost a game."

Both Moyer and Baroutsis agree the curriculum program is the ultimate learning experience.

"You're learning from instructors, certified trainers and upper-level trainers," Baroutsis said. "In this program you're always learning something."

In fact, much of the learning comes from watching other student trainers. Moyer said student trainers are notorious for watching trainers perform new and unfamiliar procedures on injured athletes.

"You can see the bone move," she said, "if you're lucky enough to be around."