My goal for this blog post was to find a portrayal of an athletic trainer in popular culture. I tried to think of some movies that have athletic trainers in them an not many came to mind. In fact there were only two that I could think of. The first of the two movies was Miracle, but I remember that I wrote about that movie earlier in the semester so I did not want to write about that again. Second of the two movies was Youngblood.
In Youngblood there is an athletic trainer of a Canadian junior hockey team. He is kind of a weird, odd older man in his late 50s who is not afraid to say what he thinks. Sometimes the things that come out of his mouth make the players he takes care of uncomfortable. There is one scene where Dean Youngblood, the main character and young star hockey player, gets injured and their is a cut above one of his eyes. The athletic trainer takes him to the locker room during intermission and literally sews the cut up. He makes a few comments while sewing up the cut that make Dean uncomfortable and it almost seems as though he is not the best athletic trainer in the world.
I think for some people this how they view athletic trainers; old, odd, and not so good at their job.
And from watching a movie such as Youngblood I can see why they would think this. Although I feel that the majority of people do not view athletic trainers this way. For the most part I think that majority of people view athletic trainers as a kind of "knock off" doctor who is on site to give you immediate medical care. This not an accurate description of an athletic trainer, but it does not take away from the profession. And to go along with this I would be willing to bet that most people view athletic trainers as people who love sports. Overall, I believe that athletic training and its trainers are not understood as well as they should be and until recent years not appreciated enough.
Work Cited
Youngblood. Dir. Peter Markle. Perf. Rob Lowe, Cynthia Gibb, Patrick Swayze. Guber - Peters
Company, 1986. DVD.
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