For Yellowjacket Athletics, there are many victories, highlights, and celebrations for athletes during their careers at UW-Superior. However, some of these athletes may face setbacks and injuries along the way.
Ben Kasper, the head athletic trainer at UWS cares for the health and safety of Yellowjacket Athletes through rehab and treatment. Kasper has been working with Yellowjacket athletes for six years, with four of those six as the head athletic trainer.
This year, however, things look a little different for Kasper as he has become an adjunct faculty member where he is teaching an Introduction to Sports and Exercise Medicine course.
With this new role on top of being the head athletic trainer, Kasper gets to keep helping Yellowjackets by teaching them about a topic he is well knowledgeable in.
Kasper Teaching a Group of Students About an Arm Splint.
Photo by Isaiah Wiita
A few students of Kasper’s are also athletes at UWS. Kasper has worked with these athletes before, but as a teacher, his interaction with these athletes looks a little different.
“It’s really kind of wearing a different hat, I guess. In there, I am caring for the health and safety of them and in here it’s to educate. So being able to keep that separate I think is pretty important,” said Kasper.
Two of Kasper’s students, Isaac Becket, a soccer player at UWS, and Dan Cundy, a senior majoring in exercise science, spoke about why it is important to have Kasper teach an Introduction to Sports and Exercise Medicine course here on campus.
“It’s nice to have someone that has loads of experience and he is teaching us real-life stuff every class, rather than just reading off a syllabus,” said Becket.
“You know that the knowledge that he is giving you is real and from his own experience,” said Cundy.
March is National Athletic Training Month. This is a time for athletic trainers in the profession to spread awareness about the work they do and its importance.
Kasper has an opportunity to spread this awareness to UW-Superior students through his adjunct faculty member role on campus.
“If I can get a few people in the room to kind of look at athletic training as a serious career path for them,” said Kasper. “Being able to hopefully mold some people into becoming ATs or to see that there is an importance about the profession and why it needs to continue to grow and become bigger.”
