Stephanie Grajek

I've been an athletic trainer since 2013, and what drew me to this field was my love of sports combined with my passion for helping people. I figured this was the perfect profession because I get to watch sports every day and help kids get back to playing the sport that they love. The bulk of my experience has been in the secondary school setting, but I've also worked in collegiate settings, in a concussion clinic, and did in-home functional therapy for 2 years with individuals who were in car accidents, working a lot with brain injuries and spinal cord injuries. I've been in my current role for 2 years, and what makes it special is that I'm working at the same high school I attended as a student. There are still a lot of the same coaches and teachers in the building, and I'm very familiar with how the organization runs everything at the school, which has been really great. My typical day involves getting to the school, getting water ready, updating notes, checking in with the athletic director for schedule changes, and then once school gets out, getting the kids ready for practice. I bounce around between practices looking at any injuries that come up, or if there are games, I'm at the games or bouncing between them. It involves a lot of late nights, but it's rewarding when I get to work with the kids and see them succeed at the sport that they love. My main area of expertise is probably concussions, and the number of cases just depends on the year. We have to be adaptable to a lot of last-minute schedule changes due to weather, especially during spring season, but you know that going into it. I was recently elected as secretary of the Michigan Athletic Trainers Society, which was pretty cool. I just completed my Doctor of Athletic Training from Moravian University in Pennsylvania this past August after two years, which was definitely worth it.