The Sports Medicine Team

Athletic health care is pretty special in Blount County.  You won’t find the depth and breadth of services we have here in many places across the country.  You will find the quality of services found here in even fewer places.

Peggy Bratt is a familiar and beloved figure in our community’s athletic community. The Head Athletic Trainer at Alcoa High School, next week Peggy will be inducted into the Southeast Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame.

She is also Sports Medicine Director for Total Rehabilitation at Blount Memorial Hospital and sees patients and athletes at Total Rehabilitation’s Cherokee clinic.  Peggy is an important part of the incredible success Alcoa High has enjoyed.

Four months ago, Dr. Kyle Boden joined Knoxville Orthopedic Clinic-Maryville (formerly known as OrthoTennessee-Maryville and before that as Maryville Orthopedic Clinic).  Dr. Boden is a Knoxville native, graduating from Karns High School where he played quarterback on the football team.

He then went to Emory & Henry College where he also starred at quarterback. Medical school was at ETSU’s Quillen College of Medicine and then orthopedic residency at the University of Kentucky, where he worked with the athletic teams.  He then did a sports medicine fellowship at Case Western University where his responsibilities included working with the Cleveland Browns of the NFL. 

Soon after arriving here, he became team physician at Alcoa High School, where he joined them on their path to a 10^th straight 3A state football championship.  He is also available to athletes of all ages and at all our schools.

Dr. Boden is a Sports Orthopedist.  That’s an orthopedic surgeon that has specialized in sports medicine. Not everything he does is surgery—most of what he does is take care of athletes with orthopedic injuries that don’t need surgery, but which need the services of an orthopedic specialist.  Very few communities our size have a Sports Orthopedist serving them.

Dr. Ben England arrived just four and a half years ago, but it seems like he has been here forever.  Dr. England is a graduate of William Blount High School, where he wrestled and played soccer.  After receiving an undergraduate degree in biochemistry at UT he then attended ETSU’s Quillen College of Medicine.  After primary care residency and sports fellowship at UT, he returned to the tri-cities area where he served as the Head Team Physician at ETSU and as team physician for Elizabethton High School for the next ten years.

To our good fortune, he decided to come home, joining the staff of Blount Memorial Physicians Group and establishing his medical practice at East Tennessee Medical Group.  You can always find him on the sidelines of a high school football game on Friday night.  He also serves as a Team Physician for Maryville College.

What isn’t always apparent is that we are all part of a sports medicine team. Just like the athletes we serve, our team is only as strong as its members.  And our team is really strong. 

What most people don’t realize is just how extensive the athletic health care coverage is in our community.  Total Rehabilitation provides athletic trainers at Alcoa High, Apostolic Christian Academy, Clayton-Bradley Academy, Eagleton College & Career Academy, Greenback School, Heritage High, Maryville Christian School, Maryville High, Samuel Everett School of Innovation, Sequoyah High, and William Blount High. Total Rehabilitation athletic trainers can also be found at many middle school/junior high events, multi-school events, and community events like the Reindeer Run. Whew!!!

Total Rehabilitation at Cherokee opens their doors at 7 AM each weekday morning so that local athletes can see an athletic trainer.  This gets them seen in a timely fashion, which means that they get back on the playing field as soon as it is safe and appropriate

Dr. England and the physicians at Knoxville Orthopedic Clinic-Maryville (it’s going to take a while before that rolls off the tongue) also come in early each morning to see athletes that Total Rehabilitation athletic trainers send them.

All in all, it’s amazing what we have around here. Our community is truly blessed.  

Courage

                                 

Walt Disney said “all our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.”

I’ve written about discipline, commitment, and hope. I want to close out this series by talking about courage.

Have you seen the movie Wicked yet?  My daughter-in-law tells me that there is a bit of foreshadowing about the Cowardly Lion in this one that will be explained in Chapter 2.

The Cowardly Lion was always my favorite Wizard of Oz character. I can still mimic “I’m the king of the for-est…” For some reason, I guess I could relate to him. I also remember that, in the end, the Wizard gave him a medal for bravery but told him that he had it in him already.  That the medal just verified that.

So, what is Courage?

Courage is being afraid, but moving forward anyway.  Those friends and acquaintances that I’ve had that have been in war tell me that they were always afraid.

The horrors of war were real. Knowing that you could die at any moment, well, if it doesn’t scare you, then you must be too dumb to be afraid. From the trench warfare of World War I to the jungles of Vietnam, young men demonstrated courage beyond anything most of us can imagine. It’s terrible to think about having to worry about IED’s in a middle eastern desert.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but it is what keeps you moving against odds that might seem overwhelming. Underdogs in a sporting event?  Courage.  Give up or give it all you’ve got.

Courage might mean that at your lowest point, when the game seems lost, you keep going…keep fighting. Courage means take one more step.

I think a lot of times, that’s the best definition of courage—that you just go one more step. Keep going. Keep fighting.

Down 5-0 in a tennis match?  Win the next point. And then the one after that. Strike out? Get back up to bat and try again. Miss a shot? Take another.

I used to work with the kickers on the football team at Maryville High School. I never really tried to coach them about how to kick, but I always tried to help them with the mental side of the game.  If one of them ever missed a kick, I would find them immediately on the sidelines and tell them that the last one didn’t count.  Only the next one counted.

We have to do that. We have to put our failures behind us and move on.  How else do we get out of bed in the morning? How else do we take the field or the court again?

I find no glory in failures, but I do find lessons to be learned. Failure hurts. Or it should. But we should learn from our mistakes.  We should learn how NOT to do something. The only true failure is when you don’t take the lesson away from the failure.

Failure builds resilience and character. How we behave when we fail reveals who we truly are. What we do next reveals who we are to become. We should not fear failure.

When I was the boss, I wanted my managers to risk making mistakes. I wanted them to feel empowered to make decisions, even at the risk of being wrong. The same thing is true for our children. If we won’t allow them to make mistakes, how will they learn?

A quote that was on my wall as a teenager and is still imprinted on my heart today is as follows:  “On the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that on other days, on other fields will bear the fruits of victory.”

And from Kipling’s poem If—“…If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, yours is the earth and everything that’s in it, and—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”

Have courage. Persevere. Take just one more step. Then another.

 

Commitment

 

I want to continue with a New Years theme for this month. I talked about discipline last week, and got a lot of feedback on that one.

This week, let’s look at commitment. We’re in the new year now, and, as predicted, gym memberships are up.  But as I wrote about last week, too often those gym memberships do not seem to translate to longevity.

I’m a big fan of gyms—all gyms. I don’t care for the push for long term gym memberships.  My opinion has always been that if you don’t want to be there, if you aren’t going to use that gym membership, then you should be allowed to move on. Back when I owned a gym, that’s the way we did it.

Still, I understand that a prepaid membership can be incentive to make use of that membership. I get that. But that just doesn’t seem to be the case.  I guess once that membership is paid, it’s easier to ignore.

But there is one irrefutable truth:  If you want to pursue good health, you must be COMMITTED to that pursuit.

The discipline thing that I wrote about last week is a necessary ingredient. I mentioned getting up at 4:30 in the morning to hit the gym or get some exercise. It takes DISCIPLINE to do that.  Week after week. Month after month. Year after year.

I’ve told this story before—but it’s been a while. My dad had his first heart attack when I was 5 years old. What that means is that my family lived the life of a heart patient family from as far back as I can remember.

My dad took Coumadin until the day he died and did everything his doctor told him.  The science is much better now (SO much better) but it was what we knew. Some of it still works. No fried foods. Lean meats. Low sodium.

What we know now that we didn’t know then is that there are good fats and bad fats, and that we need those good fats.  We thought eggs were completely off limits. We now know that eggs in moderation are a good thing. We thought all red meat was bad. We now know that lean red meet can be important. 

Because of science and cardiac research, we know so much more. There just wasn’t much science behind it back then. I used to be on the Board of Directors for the American Heart Association and the sermon we preached back then is what we thought was good medicine. Unfortunately, a lot of what we knew has proven to be wrong. High carb intake is bad. We didn’t know that.

The biggest change in cardiac science is that we now understand how profound exercise is to cardiac health. Some have argued that it is more important than the nutritional aspect.

Let me repeat that—exercise is absolutely essential to good cardiac health. You might live to be a hundred but if you don’t exercise, you are the exception.

I don’t care what you do. Just move! Sure, for bone health you need weightbearing activities. And to stay active, you need to do some strength training.

What you don’t want to do is to follow the latest trends—don’t let anybody tell you that they have the “secret” to good health. They don’t. If you just move, you will be healthier.

If you think I’m self-righteous about all that, I assure you I’m not. Living with a heart patient (my dad), made me scared to death of heart disease. I have never allowed myself to be out of shape or to eat a lot of junk, not because I’m smarter or more dedicated than anybody else, but because of fear.

Do you want to be active and healthy when you’re old? Then do today what you need to do to be THAT person one day. It starts today, regardless of how old you are. Active children become active and healthy adults.

Are you truly committed to being healthy? Then I’ll see you out there.