Woman in Athletic Training

At The Governor’s Academy,  all students regardless of gender are required to either play a sport or participate in a club, some who choose sports will face some sort of injury while competing. But could you imagine not being allowed in a training room, and having being treated in the hallway after every injury by a male athletic trainer? Well, before Title IX this was the case. Like here at Govs I could never imagine the training room without Barb or even having to sit on the bench outside to be treated by Wotty. 

Title IX didn't only help female athletes on the field there was a lot of behind-the-scenes work to help them off the field, for example like in the training room. Before Title IX in 1966, there were only 2 known women who were a part of the National Athletic Traning Association (NATA) amongst a thousand men. These women were, Dotty Cohen and Sherry Kosek Babagian and they were clearly outnumbered by their male colleagues. After Title IX was passed 22 women were able to be a part of the National Athletic Traning Association (NATA). It was still difficult for these women to get jobs or be employed during this time for many reasons. First, there were 15 college programs that had athletic training programs, which is a small number of jobs, to begin with, but out of these 15 college programs, only five programs hired women athletic trainers. Although being equally as qualified as their male counterparts, they were not given the same opportunities even with Title IX. 

As time progresses more women can get opportunities not just in college programs, but they can take their athletic training skills to the next level, like the NFL and NHL. This is not only important to the female athletic trainers themselves, but it is also important to other high school girls I know. I have noticed while talking to some of my friends, that they would like to be athletic trainers for NBA teams but they rarely have ever seen women taking on these roles, so although there are about three women athletic trainers in the NBA they are the women setting the new standard that we can do jobs that were originally only for men.