Genesis Rehab, UWA partnership greatly benefits Demopolis athletes

Demopolis High School athletes and their visiting opponents are now being taken care of better than ever thanks to a new partnership that has altered the landscape of available training services.

“When I got here in January, we really had a need for something that has concerned me since I’ve been here. We have a significant amount of athletes. We’re talking about probably 300 kids just at the high school that participate in some form or fashion in athletics here. Obviously, their safety and medical needs should be and are a priority,” Demopolis High Principal Blaine Hathcock said of the need for enhancing athletic training services on the campus. “When we got here in January, we wanted to explore a lot of options to get that in a lot better shape so, if we had an event going on, we would have somebody on campus at all times to monitor those things.”

In considering the array of options, Hathcock and Tony Pittman, DHS assistant principal and athletic director, reached out to physical therapist Skibo Holman and Genesis Rehab.

“Coach Pittman and Mr. Hathcock got with us and said, ‘We’ve got so many kids out here and we have got to find some athletic training support for all these athletic events and we need some help doing that.’ I said, ‘I’ll see what we can do’ because I had no idea how all that went,” Holman said of the initial meeting.

Holman did his due diligence on the matter as he reached out to the University of West Alabama and R.T. Floyd, the renowned director of athletic training and sports at the university. That conversation proved the genesis of an unique partnership between UWA’s budding athletic trainers and Genesis Rehab, a union formed entirely to serve the student-athletes of Demopolis High School.

“R.T. kind of explained to me several different avenues that we could go. At this point in the year, they’re actually already busy with other schools, with other commitments that they make. However, we got all the athletic trainers together, the graduate assistants and kind of did it by committee. We laid out all the scheduling, laid out what was really most important and between six of the graduate assistants, everybody covered somewhere on days they didn’t have something else to do. So it’s really a big commitment on their part,” Holman explained. “And R.T. was more than gracious in helping us figure out what you can do, what you need to stay away from, how it works best because he has been doing that forever. We kind of came up with a plan, saw that it would work, and over a period of two weeks probably, we got it all in place. We decided that we would pay the athletic trainers to come over and cover and do it by committee. Everybody just took a day. They send me a list every week and tell me who is coming over, who is doing what and we make sure we’ve got everything covered. It has worked fabulously so far.”

“Skibo at Genesis Rehab along with UWA have agreed to partner with us to take care of those medical needs and training needs for our kids. So I’m extremely happy for our kids and our school. It is a game changer for our school and for our athletic programs and, the most important thing, for the safety of our kids,” Hathcock said.

As he began to explore the need for such services, Holman found himself amazed at the magnitude of the school’s athletic program. In the spring, Demopolis athletics include tennis, track, golf and soccer for boys and girls as well as baseball and softball.

“(Genesis Rehab physical therapist Don Sprewell) does football. He has been doing that for who knows how long. But, really, in the other sports, it has just been nothing or the other team brought one. That has gone okay, but there is a huge liability there,” Holman said of the previous circumstances around Demopolis athletic events. “But in talking to Blaine, to Coach Pittman, and to R.T., I just went home one night and said, ‘I’ve got to find a way to do this.’ Immediately, once we got someone out there, we’ve already had two big incidences that required someone to be there. It’s just the Lord looking out for how things went. There was a sense of urgency when we first got it because we all just felt like this was all getting so big.”

“We’ve had events that happen that magnifies why you need somebody. We had a girl hit in the mouth with a softball at a softball game that was pretty traumatic. We had somebody on campus from UWA that was standing there. Tuesday, we had about 300 kids at a track meet from about 12 different schools, so we had multiple trainers here” Hathcock said. “Those are things that make us feel more secure that we’re doing the right things for the kids. We’re extremely thankful to Genesis for them to be able to step us both financially and logistically to be able to manage all those things.”

Under the current setup, UWA graduate assistants rotate days to guarantee all of the Demopolis High athletic events and practices are covered by a trainer. The GAs often bring other students with them to provide further assistance to DHS.

“The high school has bent over backwards to try to help us with this, providing us space and a golf cart. Everybody has really just worked overtime to try to make this thing happened. And, once it happened, it was like we should have done this years ago,” Holman said. “Those guys are really skilled. I’ve been real impressed with the way the graduate assistants handle themselves and the way R.T. has kind of taught them what to do. They really just take control and do what they need to do.”

“No cost for the high school,” Hathcock said of the service being afforded to the high school. “I can’t be more thankful than I am for them to allow us to be able to provide this to our kids. He stepped up to the plate for us to be able to do that.”

As the spring sports season draws to a close, Holman has already laid out plans to improve upon the level of care afforded Demopolis student-athletes next academic year.

“Next year, we’ve already signed a contract for one graduate assistant to be over here full time. That will help a lot because you get a continuity of care. She gets to know the individual team members and the coaches get to know that person,” Holman said. “And that person then can not just look at the reactive role when somebody gets hurt, but they can also focus on the proactive role of showing kids what to do, watching out for preinjury. When you have someone there whose eyes are just dedicated to watching kids and the potential for injury, she can solve a lot of this on the front end.”