Any athlete can relate to when practice gets to that extreme point, and you need to take a breather before you collapse. But, what do you do if a teammate goes down? There are a couple of safety steps every athlete should take if such an incident happens during practice or even outside of it.

Whether on the courts or on the fields, someone could become injured physically or internally.  Being able to identify the issue is as important as assessing it.

“Some minor injuries I’ve seen during a practice are sprained ankles, happens a lot in basketball, strains and pulled muscles like groins, quads, hamstring and then more serious injuries like torn ACLs, torn meniscus in the knee, torn Achilles, contact related injuries like cuts above the eyebrow or below it where a player might need stitches,” Coach Rogers says.

For more serious cases when the person seems to be in a life or death situation, it is important that everyone at the scene acts quickly and works together to try and save the life at stake.  Keeping an organized system of roles and duties will make a tremendous difference in protecting that life.

“If it’s a life or death situation we would have to act very quickly to try and ensure that we can save someone’s life, so if there’s an adult around we want to make sure we’re communicating with the adult. Every student I think nowadays has a cellphone to call 911 or some sort of an emergency number. If an adult is not there we would like students to delegate roles and have someone try and go find an adult and then have someone stay with the person who’s in a life-threatening situation and someone call the authorities or first responders,” Coach Rogers also notes.

In the case where a student’s injury is non-fatal, the first thing you should do is contact an adult-preferably a coach since all have special training in CPR and concussion protocol procedures.  Once the cause of the injury has been discovered, the wounded student should safely be taken to Moe’s room.

“I ask that my athletes if they have a minor injury come and tell me first and then I usually direct them to our athletic trainer Moe.  Usually, Moe can either handle the situation or she can refer that athlete to their doctor or someone else if need be,” says Coach Rogers.

In conclusion, every athlete needs to know the proper procedure should a fellow athlete be injured because you might possibly make the difference in whether a person lives or dies.