During a game, injuries happen. When a player is down and is hurt, the first person on the scene is the athletic trainer. Always at the side of Los Medanos College players is athletic trainer Brian Powelson, a graduate from Saint Mary’s College. 

“I take care of preventing, evaluating, and rehabilitating players to get them back out there to allow them to do what they want and love,” Powelson said.

His job as a trainer might not be high-profile, but he is the most essential part of players staying on the field. He goes to every sports game and makes sure the athletes are running and playing as needed. 

“I’m usually the first-responder for when an injury happens on the field,” he said. 

There are more than 230 athletes trying to stay on the field during the season so at times the area that he works in can get flooded. He said he stays calm and relaxed in injury situations because he has been through it for a while. 

He questions players about injuries, assesses where the problem is and focuses on techniques for the players to use for treatment. If his advice isn’t followed, he explained the injury might get worse, and the player could face surgery to fix it. 

While players in all sports can face injury, he said he sees most injuries in football since it’s more of a contact sport than the others played at LMC. 

Different sports gravitate toward certain injuries. In baseball, he said, it’s usually arm soreness and pitchers with arm fatigue are more than likely the ones to get treated. In football, it’s more about the knees, ankles, and shoulders. In soccer it’s ankles and knees. Powelson keeps these things in mind in whichever sport he is in attendance. Injuries are unpredictable, and he said you never know when it’ll happen until the moment it does. 

Powelson also explained that being an athletic trainer is different from being a personal trainer. He said the difference is how they operate. A personal trainer trains you to get stronger and leaner at a professional venue. An athletic trainer is there to keep you healthy and ready to go to stay on the field.

He said he works to keep a strong relationship with the athletes because it’s essential to give them the comfort they need to be open and honest with him about their health status. Without a healthy relationship with their trainer, athletes may minimize the seriousness of an injury and wind up keeping themselves off the field of play longer.