SLU AT Clinical Site Spotlight - Affton High School

Affton High School – Home of the Cougars!

By: Katie Schneebeck (SLU MAT Class of 2013) and Jay Maturan (SLU MAT Class of 2014)

It’s official! We bleed purple and yellow! Located just 15 minutes from SLU’s medical campus, Affton High School has become a home to us. Most students at Affton know our humble Athletic Training room as a safe haven surrounded by nutritional facts, handouts, and a place where “Becky’s Always Right.”

Becky Stigen is our fearless leader and preceptor, here at Affton .  She teaches us everything from taping ankles to her greatest life lessons. Becky is dedicated to her job as a teacher and friend. She cries at the end of almost every season. She is the mom of all the teams and treats each player as if they are her own kid. Parents know that their sons and daughters are taken good care of in her hands, and we’re happy to be under her wing as her students.

Katie Schneebeck (SLU MAT Class of 2013), Becky Stigen ATC and Jay Maturan (SLU MAT Class of 2014)

Affton has certainly become a place where students can gain a better perspective on how life will be after graduation. Becky provides a great deal of guidance, but she lets us take the reins, giving us a realistic look into our futures. We are in charge of several athletes’ rehabilitation programs and manage the flow of the Athletic Training Room after school. Some students even come to us to train before their sport even begins! Coaches have started asking us (Becky’s handy-dandy assistants) questions about their athletes. We are certainly treated with a great deal of respect, and coaches know that Saint Louis University has taught us well.

As graduate students in SLU’s Athletic Training Program, Affton is a mecca of information and serves to teach us the bigger picture in Athletic Training. We are included in every aspect of each sport. We see all the in’s and out’s of an athletic program, write proposals for modalities, and provide information for parents to take home for their sons and daughters. When people look at our teams and see us on the end of the bench, we hope they realize that Affton takes a lot of pride in their Athletic Training staff. We received free T-shirts and parents bring us food before every football game.

We look forward to basketball, women’s swimming, and wrestling this next season. GO COUGARS!

This is one of a series of posts by the Saint Louis University Athletic Training students featuring their clinical site and their preceptors. The number, quality and diversity of clinical instruction are major assets for the SLU AT Program.