Three more schools have agreed to join Logansport Memorial Hospital’s program offering athletic training services, a hospital official told the hospital’s board this week.
Pioneer Jr.-Sr. High School and Caston Jr.-Sr. High School will each have an athletic trainer on site part-time, LMH Associate Vice President Rachel Theodore said. One trainer will cover both school corporations, she explained in an interview after the board’s meeting Monday evening.
North White Middle-High School, whose district spans north and west of Monticello in White County, will have an athletic trainer on site full time, Theodore added.
“It started with Logansport and then some of the other schools expressed interest,” Theodore said. The hospital and Logansport Community School Corp. in February announced they’d signed a 10-year agreement in which the hospital would provide athletic training services at no cost to the school, and the school would rename its stadium after the hospital.
The exact nature of the hospital’s partnerships with the other three school corporations is unclear. Theodore said the main benefits to the hospital included greater community involvement and building referrals for its physical and occupational therapy programs and its orthopedic services.
Pioneer Athletic Director John Bingaman said the Royal Center school had most recently had a Franciscan Sports Medicine trainer come in twice a week and for most varsity sporting events. He said he appreciated that LMH’s trainer would be there more often and be located closer geographically.
“The fact that we’re going to have a trainer at our institution every day is very beneficial,” Bingaman said. “Someone who can develop a rapport with our athletes.”
Theodore said the trainers will also conduct concussion screenings, starting with a baseline screening of each athlete, which will be used to compare with any post-concussion screenings conducted after an athlete suffers head trauma. Five LMH providers — four nurse practitioners and one family medicine physician — are certified to provide follow-up care for athletes that have concussions, Theodore said.
The hospital is also conducting Pioneer’s athletic physicals in May free of charge to the school. The fees the school collects will go entirely to the athletic department, Bingaman said.
Bingaman declined to elaborate on what Pioneer was offering the hospital as part of the partnership, noting a contract hadn’t been signed yet. However, he said he was “very hopeful” for the partnership’s outcomes, adding he believed they’d benefit the student athletes he works with.
LMH providers “play such a major role anyway,” he said, and it was good to see the hospital stepping out in this way as well.
A message left with Caston’s athletic director, Blake Mollenkopf, was not returned. He announced last week he’s resigning from that position effective June 30. Caston’s Superintendent Cindy Douglass did not return messages requesting comment.