Are you an athlete? Have you ever gotten injured in a sport? Chances are you have had a run-in with Golden Valleys’ athletic trainer, Patrick Godines. Along with being an athletic trainer, he has also recently aspired to teach others the valuable skills of sports medicine.

Mr. Godines is Golden Valley’s current athletic trainer of 2 years and has been teaching sports Medicine for one year now; it does not look like that will change in the near future. Mr. G is currently building up a team of aspiring athletic trainers and people wanting to work in the medical field to take his new classes.

To start, some may be wondering: what does an athletic trainer do? As the name implies, Mr. G works with all the athletes on campus to rehabilitate and build strength to prevent injuries. He adds, “…that can pretty much extend from the athletes to all students on campus as well. I work closely with Rebecca, the school nurse.”

He explains that he “pretty much oversees and is the gatekeeper for all injuries on the sports side of the school.” Patrick manages and keeps track of every injury, no matter how minuscule. Keeping track of all athletes can be very time-consuming.

Mr. G attended 4 years of undergrad at a Division 3 school in Oregon, and within those 3 years, he worked as a Sports Medicine intern. For his graduate school, he attended Oregon State University for 2 years and did his practical hands-on work. Mr. G explains how his grad school internship with hands-on experience worked for him: “For my second term, I was assigned to Oregon State University (OSU) football, which was a great experience. My third term, I was transferred to a division 2 school called Western Oregon University”.

Mr. Godines teaches two classes, one being Body Systems and Disorders during the summer term, which goes over the 12 main body systems. Mr. Godines covers all of this valuable material in a short amount of time. He explains that the class is “a full year’s worth of material in the span of 4 weeks.”

The other class Mr. Godines teaches is Sports Medicine which is taught during 0 period, before school starts. The Sports Medicine class takes the knowledge you learned from Body Systems, and helps focus on the musculoskeletal system. This teaches students how to learn hands-on training and injuries.

Sophia Marks, a student in Mr. G’s class and the Sports Medicine Club president, comments on her experience in Godines class, “His class runs like a college class, there aren’t many assignments. Instead, we have lectures and open discussions and a higher level of engagement that gets the students involved.”

Mr. G explains some aspects of his class by saying, “I do focus on injuries I see, but it’s more brought to the sports medicine team and how the physicians work with PTs, how the physical therapists work with athletic trainers, how athletic trainers work with admin on campus.” This ensures a safe campus because of a student’s understanding of certain topics, and injuries that could happen.

The Sports Medicine CTE course is not limited to just athletic training, Kaia Usher states, “If you’re interested in anything medical, I highly recommend this class. It puts you in the shoes of athletic trainers and introduces other occupations and opportunities you wouldn’t even think of.”

Mr. Godines will also be teaching another class next year after school one day a week from 4-5:30 pm. This class consists of more physical work. Patrick emphasized, “people that have already taken sports medicine will be doing a lot more hands-on work because that’s specifically what it applies to.” This class will be perfect for students who want certain careers like orthopedics or athletic training., which will be a great learning experience for students.

Patrick encourages students that are interested in a related career or finding a new hobby to take any of these classes to be on track to be in the Athletic Training class their senior year. Students should contact their counselor for more information and try something new!