By Jeff Odom
Wesley Chapel High student-athletes have a new ally in their quest for conference, district and state championships this school year.
Florida Hospital Zephyhrills has partnered with the school to give medical care for the Wildcats competing in every sport.
The hospital, which already provides care to Zephyrhills High, will provide Wesley Chapel a certified athletic trainer to treat injuries, while also teaching the student-athletes how to avoid them with conditioning and proper techniques, at no cost to the school.
“With the issue of concussions nowadays for football and those kind of contact sports, it’s going to make a big difference and a bigger impact for players to be able to seek help when they’re injured, and (trainers) can make the determination on the extent with their training,” said Wildcats athletic director Mike Rogers.
Rogers, who also serves as Wesley Chapel boys golf coach, said the knowledge and experience the partnership brings to the athletic department will be a relief to coaches who may not have the necessary training on how to treat certain injuries.
“I think it takes a lot of the pressure and responsibility of making certain determinations off of our coaches,” Rogers said. “A coach isn’t certified in that area and they’re not required to know (injuries), so it could be hard for them to make sense of some of them.”
In addition to the trainer, the Wildcats will, if needed, receive further treatment from Dr. Chris Baker, an orthopedic institute doctor at the hospital.
Baker will make trips between both Zephyrhills and Wesley Chapel events. If he is not in attendance, the trainers have direct access to him by phone, and in turn Baker will provide consultation to other medical professionals if a player is injured and transported for emergency treatment.
“The most important thing is to have a certified athletic trainer in the high school and the second most important thing is to have communication between the trainer and the doctor … to see if the player could play again, and that was 100 percent absent out here in East Pasco,” Baker said. “What I did was I basically got together with the hospital and said ‘You provide trainers in mission trips overseas, why don’t we provide an athletic trainer to the high schools?’ and got them to buy in.”
Baker said the hospital was able to get the funding for the Immediate Post–Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing (ImPACT) program, which is a brain measurement tool for athletes who have sustained a serious head injury. He added the computer baseline test will provide the trainers with an accurate diagnosis of how severe a concussion is based on an athlete’s predetermined score.
“(The trainers) are tremendously trained with concussion management and with the ImPACT testing,” Baker said. He added, “We’re needing more tools to evaluate whether they are safe to return back or not; this is another tool we have that gives us an objective measure. A lot of times if a kid has a really bad concussion we have to remove them from class and from homework until they can fully recover, so this will give us a little more credibility to test that.”
For more information on Florida Hospital Zephyrhills’ partnership with Wesley Chapel, visit www.fhzeph.org.