Lake Stevens High School’s Sports Medicine Club is returning to the Sports Medicine State tournament. The WCTSMA Spring Symposium will take place in Tacoma at the Greater Tacoma Convention Center this weekend from the 18th – 20th. Schools from all over the state compete in the competition, including some schools from Oregon and Idaho.
This year’s club members are not familiar with the tournament, but they are in good hands, as the club advisor, LSHS Sports Medicine and Chemistry teacher Erik Mahler, helped create the tournament and the questions asked throughout the tournament.
“They need to change their questions!” Mahler joked.
Participating students will put their knowledge, memory, and practice to the test through all areas of sports medicine.
“Students will be individually tested on different areas of Sports Med. It could be just an oral/practical, it could be anatomy and physiology, it could be first aid, medical terminology, strength and conditioning… and they pool those scores and they then give you a place,” Mahler explained.
The Sports Medicine Club is a branch-off of the Sports Medicine classes offered at LSHS.
“You have to be in either of the Sports Med classes to participate in the club,” senior Peyton McCubbin stated.
LSHS offers Sports Medicine and Advanced Sports Medicine. In Sports Medicine, the anatomy of the body is introduced through research of the bones, muscles, joints, ligaments, and tendons of the body. Knowledge of some basic sports tapings and sports injuries and treatments are also acquired. The advanced class builds off this gained knowledge with more in-depth information and more difficult tapings.
Unlike the structured curriculum of the classes, a variety of things happen during club meetings.
“It’s different every week… sometimes we’re making a poster for a club fair, sometimes we’re taping, and sometimes we’re doing the anatomage table,” McCubbin affirmed. An anatomage table is a digital table used for 3D anatomy visualization and virtual dissection tool used for anatomy and physiology education.
The club meets biweekly, meeting “every first and third Monday of the month,” McCubbin revealed.
Attending the tournament is a special opportunity.
“Since I started teaching sports medicine here, we have gone three times. We don’t go every year because when it is in Spokane, we don’t go,” Mahler said.
