SLU Athletic Training Student Reports from Summer NFL Internship

By: Jacob Blasingame

Jacob is spending the summer as an intern with the NFL's St. Louis Rams

The St. Louis Rams’ off season workouts started this past weekend with a rookie mini-camp, and all of the rookies and first year free agents were there.  I will be interning with the Rams athletic training staff during the off season and preseason camps, and I got my first taste this past weekend.  At first it was extremely intimidating walking into the Russell Training Center Saturday morning, and thinking about working with professional athletes.  Our day started at 6am where we got the athletic training room ready for the day, and the players came in at about 7am to get taped.  Once I taped a few wrists and ankles my nerves calmed down, and it was like any other athletic training room with any other athletes.  They were just a whole lot bigger, and weren’t afraid to tell you when they didn’t like your taping.  I even got the opportunity to wrap the shoulder on one of the lineman’s, and my arms couldn’t reach around him.  

The majority of the day consisted of two practices.  During practice each athletic trainer and intern is assigned to a position and is to follow them around the fields.  Whenever they sprinted to the next drill, we sprinted too.  There is no walking on the football field, and that goes for the athletic training staff as well.  Our job was to give them water and bandage any cuts.  I was with the defensive backs for the day and the entire defense during team time.  Our day ended at 7pm, and we were back up there at 6am on Sunday to do it again.  It was a great first experience, and I am excited for the rest of the summer.  The team will have a series of OTA’s (organized team activities) throughout the summer and another mini-camp for all of the players that I will help out with, and then training camp starts July 25^th.