Healing hands: ‘Trainer Tim’ stays busy all year long
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That man is Tim McIntosh, a certified athletic trainer who joined the Warren County High School sports department in 1994 through a joint effort of River Park Hospital, NHC Sports Medicine and the Warren County School board.
“Trainer Tim,” as he’s come to be known, works with Warren County’s athletes and coaches on a daily basis to not only work toward rehabilitating those who’ve suffered an injury, but — just as importantly —?to help insure proper guidelines are followed to help reduce the chances those athletes will ever be hurt in the first place.
“Over the years my main goal has been to help our athletes understand the proper methods of training to help prevent injuries,” McIntosh said. “No matter how hard you work to prepare these kids, you’re always going to have injuries — but in some cases you can minimize the extent of the injury.”
Over the years, as athletes have gotten stronger and faster, having an on-campus trainer available has become invaluable.
“My main goal is to help get the kids back on the field as soon as possible,” McIntosh said. “I can evaluate the injury and get them the help they need, and having a training room with equipment — so I can work with these kids on a daily basis — cuts their recovery time down considerably.”
Over the last eight years McIntosh has seen many changes in sports medicine, and is always ready to implement new and improved training techniques for the WCHS athletic department.
“We have tried to put into place more safety precautions and educate the athletes and coaches on such things as dehydration, CPR classes, head injuries and monitoring the weather for lightning,” he said. “Keeping everybody up to date and educated on potential problems is something that I and the coaches work very hard on for the safety of the kids.”
Although he tries to keep his department as up-to-date as possible, McIntosh acknowledges the field of athletic training is constantly evolving, with new techniques and more effective equipment being introduced each year.
As for his own department, he said one of his biggest needs currently would be a way to more efficiently transport himself, his equipment, and any injured athlete that needed immediate attention.
“We are learning new techniques every day, and new machines for therapy are being put on the market to help get these kids back on the field in a safe and timely manner,” he said. “I would like to see us get a cart or a ‘gator,’ so we can use it to remove players safely from the field. If a player gets hurt it is very important to remove them from the field without much movement until we can get them to the sidelines and evaluate their injury; this would be a big asset to my department.
“In the spring we have baseball, soccer and now softball here at the high school, and an emergency cart like that sure would be nice. I would be able to keep all the medical equipment in the cart and be available to get to any field in just a few seconds.”
McIntosh keeps very busy all through the year, even during the summer, as he works with several athletes in the training room each day rehabilitating injuries and preparing for up-coming workouts. As the school year begins he’s even busier, traveling to WCHS games in every sport.
And while he’d much rather remain behind the scenes — as that man standing quietly in the background — when the Pioneers and Lady Pioneers hit the field, they’re happy to know “Trainer Tim” is keeping a watchful eye on them.