St. Kitts in ‘dream job’ as Bobcats AT

Karine St. Kitts is doing everything she can to help the Brandon University Bobcats achieve their dreams.

All the while, she’s living hers.

The certified athletic therapist from Sudbury, Ont., started working for BU in September on a one-year contract to cover Schad Richea’s sabbatical.

For St. Kitts, the multi-faceted nature of the job — field work, the clinic, and the teaching component — is exactly what she wanted to do.

“I was super excited, had high hopes, and it’s met all of my expectations. I was welcomed with open arms, and the athletes were able to trust me really quick,” St. Kitts said.

“I had a quick meeting with Schad on my first day, and he said, ‘I did things one way, I don’t want you to feel like you have to copy exactly what I did. You make it your own.’ It’s been really good.”

St. Kitts initially wanted to study medicine, but drew inspiration from an injury of her own back in Grade 8.

She was a competitive dancer, practising tumbling for an upcoming competition when she suffered a third-degree ankle sprain and was told she’d miss her big event, which was less than eight weeks away.

Her doctor put her in a walking boot, but when a family friend who was an AT assessed her, she assured St. Kitts she could recover in time if she followed her instructions. That started with removing the boot as soon as possible.

“It was very aggressive, I was doing exercises two, three times a day,” said St. Kitts, who was able to get back into competition form in time.

Basically, the idea her sprained ankle should have been immobilized to heal is an outdated practice, and it’s not the only idea continuous research in the athletic therapy world has challenged lately.

Another one on the top of St. Kitts’s mind is ice for injuries. She explained that there’s controversy about whether or not to use ice for acute treatment of injuries.

While it slows down nerve sensations to alleviate pain, it reduces inflammation, which is a normal and integral part of the healing process.

One more specific concept St. Kitts had the opportunity to research at the U of M looked at the recovery of shoulder injuries. The general idea was that one’s dominant shoulder would be stronger and potentially less flexible than the non-dominant one, so an athlete wouldn’t be considered back to normal until it showed such characteristics.

However, her study found no significant difference between the two, meaning as long as both shoulders show similar results in tests, the athlete should be good to go.

“That’s just one little lab at U of M. To know there’s a bunch of labs doing a bunch of different things all the time is really cool,” St. Kitts said. “It’s really fascinating to know it’s still evolving.”

Since St. Kitts ended up at BU just a few months after graduating, most of her experience has come from practicum placements with the Bisons women’s soccer team, as well as the hockey and swim programs. She also worked for the Cleburne Railroaders baseball club of the American Association when they visited the Winnipeg Goldeyes during the summer.

The U of M’s practicum process is extensive, with students shadowing teams early in their time for over six weeks before ranking which ones they’d like to work with in future seasons. In their fourth year, they also train younger students.

So St. Kitts recognizes the importance of guiding her student ATs at BU.

She gained a lot of experience in concussion assessment at the U of M and implemented mandatory Sport Concussion Assessment Tool 6 (SCAT6) baseline tests for all Bobcat athletes at the beginning of the season.

She knows sports can come with the challenge of risk management and coaches wanting an injured player back as soon as possible.

Especially as a younger AT, she has to be strong in her belief in what’s best for the people she works with.

While she has quickly become a Bobcat and brings passion to the sideline, she cares more about the well-being of the players than winning, recognizing that short-term gain for potential long-term injury risk is seldom the way to go.

“It’s good that I have the coaches, the relationship we have, they trust me to do my job well, and if I tell them they can’t play, they don’t push back, which is really good,” St. Kitts said, adding she feels good about the job she’s done and the trust she has gained so far. “The outcomes I’ve already been showing with the athletes is number one. “Another way to gain their trust is just talking, getting to know them as a person, more than just their injury, is super important to me, and being that support system beyond just athletics is really important to me as well.”

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com