Since the Holbrook Middle High School opened its doors, there have been various changes to the school besides the building itself. One of the biggest changes the school has seen is a new athletic trainer, Donovan Kelly.

An athletic trainer has the difficult task of taking care of injured school athletes and ideally helping the avoid injury in the first place. Throughout the year, he has treated players from a vast amount of sports. For a job like this, a trainer requires a strong connection with the student athletes. 

I had a chance to sit down with him to talk about his tactics for treating athletes. “I think it’s important to establish a connection with your students and get to know them on a personal level, where they are, where they come from. And then after that, I tend to establish a relationship with students based off of athletics, cause that’s where I see them. So, whether they’ve done well, I will know how to help them improve. Or how things are going in daily life. I also like to check in to see how they are doing in school as well because that is also an important aspect of being a student athlete. Just kind of getting to know them, you know, aspects about their life. I suppose I connect a lot to students about sports”.

He has an equally strong relationship with his co-workers. I interviewed Brendan Case, the school’s athletic director, and asked how Donovan improves the athletics department.  “[Donovan] made injury management and prevention a lot easier for our coaches, student athletes, and parents. It has just streamlined the process, keeping people on the field, and if they are off the field, getting them on quicker. So we are very happy to him here.”

While Donovan is helping the school at the moment, I asked if he would stay in Holbrook for years to come. “I think I would like to stay at Holbrook for a couple years, kind of establish the fairly new program. This is the 2nd year in the Holbrook High School history. So I’d like to get in and establish this program, establish how things work, and I do need to go back and get my masters, personally, at some point.”