Athletes manage injuries

Diego Vasques Glover, Reporter

Playing throughout the school year many student athletes may experience an injury while practicing or playing during a game. If an injury does occur that athlete may have to spend a certain amount of time recuperating in order to get back into their season.

With sports injuries ranging from non-severe to severe, Bellevue East School Nurse Kala Brown explains what student athletes should be wary of when exercising or playing games.

“A big thing for sports is just to use your common sense on body mechanics, so don’t put your body in a position for an injury, and also like stretching beforehand because it warms your muscles, your ligaments, you’re less likely to get an injury if you’re stretching beforehand and just using smart body mechanics,” Brown said.

An online document by the American Academy of Pediatrics advises while injury is more likely to occur with physical contact in a sport, most injuries originate from overuse, with the most common sports injuries being sprains, strains, and stress fractures. Some exercises are recommended as well to prevent further injury such as stretching to increase flexibility and avoid potential muscle injury, the academy stresses to take periodic breaks to reduce the chance of heat illness.

Brown recommends how much time an athlete should stay in the recovery process for the kind of injury they may be dealing with.

“If it’s a concussion it can take weeks or months, if it’s a strain or sprain it’s just days or weeks, so pretty short,” Brown said.

Cross country and wrestling coach Collin Mink mentions what he does when assessing a student athlete for a possible injury while supervising over multiple athletes during conditioning or events.

“Well usually my knowledge is limited, i’m not a medical professional, but I run into it at least once a season where a kid will get hurt and depending on the severity I always make sure not to move them, you don’t want to move them if a kid is on the ground grasping their leg, you know I want to assess it and make sure there’s nothing protruding out, it’s not a broken bone,” Mink said.

Mink describes the current process student athletes may have to go through in order to participate again in their sport, and what has changed when dealing more severe injuries.

“Depending on the severity they can be out for a considerable amount of time, one of the bigger injuries that didn’t use to require as much time out because less was known about it is concussions, concussions today kids have to go through a protocol to return to play and usually it takes up to if not more than a week for them return back to playing,” Mink said.

Bellevue East student athlete Brett Robalik gives advice in what student athletes should do when participating in their specific sport, and what tactics they could use when playing sports that involve projectiles.

“Wear the right equipment, if you’re batting, wear a helmet, if you’re catching, wear a catcher’s face mask, it kinda helps to turn balls away from your face,” Robalik said.

Recalling his past injuries Robalik mentions his experience and consequence of dealing with one of his most memorable sports injuries, and describes what happened during the incident.

“Well Sophomore year, I got smacked in the nose with a baseball and it kinda hurt, broke my nose, shattered everywhere, blood everywhere, I can’t breathe out of my left nostril anymore,” Robalik said.