“You don’t have to be in sports medicine to step off a curb and roll your ankle,” said Todd Garrett, Dos Pueblos High School sports medicine and kinesiology teacher. “But if you know how to treat it — or treat your parents or your friends who rolled their ankle — that can come in handy in life.”
The Sports Medicine Pathway is one of the seven Career Technical Education (CTE) pathways offered at DPHS, a set of trade-specific classes that prepare students for future careers and higher education in that field.
Angelia Pagliaro (12) finished the three-class-long pathway in her junior year and explained how “rewarding” it felt to learn skills that were applicable in real life.
“We did get CPR certified, and we did get first aid certified,” Pagliaro said. “We learned how to stop the bleed if someone has a major bleed, and also take someone out of a car accident if they can’t move, or if they have a spinal injury.”
Students on the Sports Medicine Pathway are required to complete the medical biology, kinesiology, and sports medicine classes. After finishing those classes, they have the opportunity
to work in the DPHS training room, where they gain experience as student trainers, helping athletes recover by providing ice, heat, taping, and stretches.
Tanner Love (12) finished the pathway as a sophomore and spent her junior year working in the training room as a student trainer.
“I only have my season for the fall season, and then I don’t do anything,” Love said. “So it’s nice to watch all the other sports, also just being there for them and being a helping hand.”
Love said she was excited to sign up for the Sports Medicine Pathway after her positive experience in the medical biology class during her freshman year.
“During med bio is when I heard about the whole pathway,” Love said. “I signed up for kinesiology my sophomore year, and I had a bunch of fun in that … so I talked to Garrett and asked him what the next steps were, and he said, ‘Sports Medicine.’”
Love attended the annual district showcase at Earl Warren Showgrounds to represent the DPHS Sports Medicine Pathway, where she introduced the pathway and what it had to offer to incoming ninth graders.
“I even brought kids over who didn’t even want to go to DP or weren’t even interested in health care or medicine,” Love said. “They had heard I’d taken the program so they asked a bunch of questions about that, and I very much recommended for them to at least try the pathway.”
