Diablo Fit: Pro Health Care for Prep Athletes

Tri Valley High school teams get professional athletic medical care

The game-winning touchdown, the ninth inning homerun or the last sprint for the line, these are the crowd pleasers. But in the world of high school sports, victories are just the results of good training and good health care.

Reason enough why Amador, Foothill and Dublin high schools have been happy to welcome a new volunteer medical program by Tri-Valley Orthopedic Specialists of Pleasanton (TVO). In the special arrangement TVO will be providing onsite certified athletic trainers and team physicians to all three schools.

The athletic trainers and team physicians will be working in tandem with coaches and athletes to provide on-the-spot medical care for injuries and injury prevention education.

“Working with the kids is always fun, they’re a great bunch at the high school: Full of energy,” says Elicia Jacobs, Dublin High School’s athletic trainer. “They know they can count on me to follow through if there’s a serious injury or if there’s a minor one.”

Jacobs says that she thinks the TVO program comes at a crucial time when budget cuts are always looming and that the program allows coaches the ability to focus more on winning games and less on getting players back into the game.

“As coach, there are so many things to take care of,” says John Mannion, co-head coach of Varsity Football at Dublin High School.  “With Elicia, we don’t need to worry about tapings, treatments and other things.  She’s right there.  If there’s a problem on the tennis court, we call Elicia on her cell phone and she’s there in minutes…with her there, you know great care will be provided.”

Yet the TVO medical program is more than just onsite medical care says Dr. Ian Stine, Dublin High School’s Team Physician. He points out that it also involves implementing new techniques and providing public education to parents and athletes.

“With this program you can basically start training injuries more aggressively and get student athletes back into their sports faster,” Stine says.

He explains that there are many new injury prevention strategies to avoid preseason problems; and when injuries do occur, on the spot diagnosis ensures that a recovery program is already established as soon as possible.

Even some surgeries are on the menu. Stine says that if surgeries are needed they have new techniques that will put injured players – who would have been out for a season or perhaps out of their sport altogether – back into the game.

Stine, an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in sports medicine has worked with players from the San Francisco Giants to the 49ers in addition to working with players from division one universities. He says his hope is to bring his unique skill set to the high school level as well.

“It’s obviously fun working with pro athletes and division-one schools just because of the caliber of athletes,” Stine says. “But as far as day-to-day satisfaction, it ended up being just as much or more fun working with the high schoolers because it’s raw athletics with raw athletes.”

For more information on the TVO Sports Medicine program,contact go to trivalleyorthopedics.com

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