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Need for an Updated Athletic Training Room at Union High School

My name is Taylor Vaske and I work for Athletico Physical Therapy in Waterloo as a contracted employee in the Union Community School District. I am currently in my ninth year serving as the head athletic trainer at Union High School where I oversee the health and well-being of our student-athletes and staff through preventative measures, injury assessment, acute care, triage, rehabilitation, referral, and emergency care. I also serve as a preceptor for the University of Northern Iowa’s Master of Athletic Training program in which I mentor and provide clinical experience opportunities for both graduate and undergraduate students.

On average, I see approximately 20-30 student-athletes each day and am required to quickly and efficiently prepare those athletes for practices and competitions in addition to providing practice/competition coverage and follow-up treatments. During the 2023-2024 school year, I had 3,005 student-athlete sign-ins to my athletic training room, provided 500 injury evaluations, 1,620 prophylactic taping/bracing techniques, 558 injury rehabilitation sessions, and 1,418 manual therapy interventions, not including services provided on the sideline during competitions.

At its current state, the athletic training room at UHS is approximately 120 square feet and houses one treatment table, one taping table, one whirlpool, one small storage cabinet, and an ice machine. This leaves a very limited amount of space to be able to move within the room. Such a small, cluttered area makes it incredibly difficult to be efficient in getting our student-athletes assessed and treated in a timely manner. Frequently, there is a line of kids having to wait out in the hallway that poses problems with keeping hallways clear. I am unable to fit more than 1-2 student-athletes in the athletic training room at a time and am frequently required to utilize the hallways to conduct my work, again impeding the flow of traffic between the equipment room, gym, and boys’ locker room. This creates a challenging environment for me to provide quality learning opportunities and mentorship to my UNI students. Due to the lack of space available in the athletic training room, I am required to store any extra supplies in the media center which also takes away needed space from the rest of our staff.

Most of the equipment in the athletic training room is outdated – the tables need to be reupholstered, the storage cabinet is insufficient for our supplies, and the whirlpool is unbalanced and does not drain properly, causing water to run into the rest of the room.

The added space for a larger, updated athletic training room proposed in the UCSD facilities improvement bond referendum would allow our student-athletes at Union to receive a better quality of care, and would offer improved opportunities for future athletic trainers to get quality, hands-on experience at a time when there is such a dire need for this service across the country.

Taylor Vaske, LAT, ATC is the head athletic trainer at Union High School and a resident of Waterloo.