ROP Course Gives Students Glimpse of Sports Medicine Field
By Jennifer Wake
With more than 3.5 million children under the age of 15 requiring medical attention due to sports injuries each year, and overuse injuries due to year-round sports involvement and training on the rise, sports medicine careers are on the rise as well.
Acalanes, Campolindo and Miramonte students enrolled in the ROP Sports Medicine course are getting first-hand knowledge of the field through course work and, for some, by working directly with local teams to help with wound care.
Acalanes ROP teacher Chris Clark, a certified athletic trainer who has taught the course for the past 9 years (6 of those at Acalanes), says sports medicine is "a career that's expanding with more active young athletes getting more overuse injuries like stress fractures." The course prepares students for advanced training or entry-level jobs as Athletic Trainer, Physical Therapist, or Physical Therapy Assistant, but it's not easy.
"This is a UC-approved science elective where anatomy and physiology are pretty heavy in the class," Clark says. "Counselors do a good job of explaining what's expected."
According to the ROP course description, students use critical thinking to analyze mechanisms of sport injuries and design appropriate primary care and rehabilitation plans, understand and communicate principle of musculoskeletal anatomy, exercise physiology, biomechanics, injury pathology and understand orthopedic injuries and traumas. Students gain knowledge of medical careers, athletic training, and motivation for further education in science at the university level.
Although student athletes can benefit from their personal experience on the field (either from learning from their own injuries or from those of teammates), Clark says he gets a wide variety of students signing up for the course each year.
"Some kids are high achievers with multiple AP courses, others are in Resource looking for a way to round out their course load," he says. There is no real gender bias or athlete or non-athlete bias either. "It's pretty evenly split male to female, athlete to non-athlete."
A number of Clark's students have gone on to study sports training and other medicine-related fields.
Top students also have an opportunity to work within the community. "The majority of internships happen on campus, but more advanced students work with local sports clubs like the Walnut Creek Warriors Lacrosse Club," Clark says. "They all get first-aid and CPR training, and help with things like icing injuries, or cleaning up wounds." In addition to the skills developed for specific fields, each class helps students develop a résumé, review effective interviewing techniques and identify sources of employment. Students also complete a portfolio of their class work.
"The students get a certificate at the end of the course, and they know they're trained which will give them better job opportunities," Clark says. "Not only does it create job opportunities, ROP gives these kids a skillset they can take with them into the workforce."
Acalanes, Campolindo and Miramonte students enrolled in the ROP Sports Medicine course are getting first-hand knowledge of the field through course work and, for some, by working directly with local teams to help with wound care. 
Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA