Jury faces trial under fire in new job

Kevin Jury brings a very particular set of skills to his new job with the Brandon Wheat Kings.

The Western Hockey League club hired the 28-year-old Ottawa physiotherapist to replace former athletic therapist Zach Hartwick. While Jury said it’s rare for someone in an athletic therapist role to have his background, there are a couple of similar situations in the Ontario Hockey League.

Jury did a fellowship with Doug Stacey, who had served for years in the physiotherapy and athletic therapist role with the London Knights, and learned it could work.

“He taught me a lot of what I know in regard to sports,” Jury said. “Just having all these positive physiotherapy colleagues and role models helps say ‘Hey, you can actually do this in this field.’ A lot of the skills are quite similar. It does overlap quite a bit.

“There is some additional stuff as a physiotherapist that you need to take to get on an AT’s level, things like your first responder and emergency medical stuff, and then the rehab is relatively the same because you see the same injuries and more or less treat them as an AT would.”

Jury and the Wheat Kings were in action last night in a game against the Penticton Vees that ended well after deadline. They finish the B.C. Division trip tonight against the Kelowna Rockets.

Brandon head coach and general manager Marty Murray said Jury has been a nice replacement for the well-liked Hartwick, who departed after five seasons.

“He’s really professional,” Murray said. “He’s coming out of his shell a little bit, and we’re seeing more of his personality. We as a staff like to have fun too, we like to laugh, and we’re getting to see that side of Kevin a little more.

“He’s a physiotherapist, which allows him to do a lot more things with our guys in-house. He’s on top of things. We threw him right into the fire; there were a lot of injuries in pre-season, so he had a lot on his plate, and I thought he handled it really well.”

SPORTS BACKGROUND

Growing up, Jury did cross-country skiing but was predominantly a sprinter for Queen’s University in track and field events. He also plays soccer: His highest level of hockey was as a road hockey goalie as a kid.

Jury, who was born and raised in Ottawa, earned a kinesiology degree at Queen’s and his master’s in physiotherapy at the University of Western Ontario. The latter included a sport physiotherapy fellowship at Fowler Kennedy Sports Medicine Clinic.

“I got injured growing up and going through all the sports I did,” Jury said. “I had a good physiotherapist who helped me get back into playing shape so that was kind of the direction I wanted to go into ever since then. Kinesiology was the building block, the stepping stone for that.”

A lot of people start a lot of things and don’t follow through, but the glue that kept Jury going was the good experiences he had in athletic therapy and training fields when he was in university as a student trainer with the Queen’s men’s hockey team that included Brandon’s Duncan Campbell.

That squad won an Ontario University Athletics championship in 2019.

In the summers, he worked with a semi-pro baseball team in Ottawa.

“I was flooded with these experiences and they didn’t break me,” Jury said. “I figured I would be pretty good at it and that set me on the path I’ve been on since.”

After moving to Western, he worked with the men’s and women’s hockey teams, football players and club teams, including squash and water polo.

His last stop before Brandon was at Intercept Rehab & Sports Medicine in Surrey, B.C. When he was there, he worked with a rugby club and a Junior B hockey team.

The experience with athletes in different sports exposed him to a wide range of issues and provided some invaluable experience.

“I’ve seen a lot, so I know how things are going to be,” Jury said. “If I see it there, ‘It’s OK, I’ve seen that injury in Junior B hockey, I can apply it here for some of the guys here.’ You get a lot of contact injuries that are very similar between football and rugby and hockey with things like shoulders, necks and backs.

“Once you figure out what uniqueness an athlete has, then you can tweak that because you know it works with other athletes.”

BRANDON BOUND

The job in Brandon opened up after Hartwick headed back to southern Ontario because he and his wife Megan wanted to raise their young daughter Rory closer to their extended families.

Jury said the job seemed like a good fit.

“Being able to provide care to athletes at a level where they are going to be able to be doing great things appealed to me,” Jury said.

Other recent Wheat Kings therapists include William Sadonick-Carriere (2019 to 2021), Roman (RJ) Kaszczij (2018 to 2019), Chris Trivieri (2016 to 2018), Josh Guenther (2013 to 2016), Grant Ammann (2011 to 2013) and Cam McGhee (2008 to 2011).

Kaszczij now works with the National Hockey League’s Vancouver Canucks as head athletic therapist, and Sadonick-Carriere is the assistant AT with the Ottawa Senators.

“There is certainly some pedigree that has come through here,” Jury said.

Jury started in Brandon in late July.

After getting into town, he came to the rink three or four hours later, and second-year equipment manager Jake McKercher showed him around the facilities.

“It’s fantastic,” Jury said. “It’s a really nice spot. It’s been updated recently, so I can’t complain about any of that. I would say we’re spoiled out here.”

“At the end of the day, you make the best with what you have,” he added. “The fact we have a couple more toys here and access to some things that other teams don’t have sweetens the pot a little bit.”

Early in the process, the team put Jury in touch with Hartwick — who is now the athletic therapist for the OHL’s Sudbury Wolves — to help him get his footing. Jury said Hartwick has been quick to help him with whatever he needs.

Jury arrived in time to be involved in the off-season fitness check-ins with strength and conditioning coach Tyler Sanjenko, which allowed him to virtually meet some of the players.

HEALTHY RESPECT

His work as a physiotherapist is incremental. Jury can’t wave a magic wand and heal a player: His job is to teach the player the tools to help themselves while providing support wherever possible.

He said there are a couple of ways to define success in the job. One involves man games lost, although that’s a number that can fluctuate based on lucky or unlucky moments on the ice.

Another is team success.

“Every guy might not be 100 per cent healthy, but he’s healthy enough to contribute to his role and play into the success of the team,” Jury said. “Every team win is a good way as well, to see our guys healthy enough to compete and win.”

That means he can’t ever lose sight of the latest developments in the field.

The sports science field is constantly evolving as research and the understanding of the human body changes. That puts a premium on continued learning, because today’s great idea might be next month’s big mistake.

“It’s super important,” Jury said. “Every day, new stuff comes out. The role I’m in here, it’s not just rehab but also nutrition, hydration, and a little bit of strength and conditioning as well. All these different fields are constantly adapting, so you do need to stay on top of that to make sure guys are getting the best possible care.

“It’s maybe having a guy who’s out for 10 days and shortening it to seven days. In this league, it actually matters. Outside, you have all the time in the world. Here, you’re trying to get a guy back for a game.”

There is also the job of managing personalities. Every player is different, and they may respond to a variety of motivations to keep them on task or from overtraining when they’re recovering from an injury.

That makes the job part psychologist too.

“You have to figure out what makes them go,” Jury said. “A lot of it is ‘Hey, I want to get out there and play hockey,’ and me in my role in the professional manner, it’s ‘Hey, I want to get you back to what you want to do.’

“It’s developing those personal relationships with those guys and getting to know them outside of hockey. Where do they come from? What do they enjoy doing?”

He said that can start as simply as asking for restaurant recommendations.

In a lot of jobs, it can take a full year to understand the ins and outs of the position and how it changes. Jury is still early in that first year, and admitted it has been a steep learning curve.

Despite the torrent of information his friend Blair Hennessey of the OHL’s Sarnia Sting told him he would face, Jury’s enjoying every minute of it.

“My colleague Blair put it very poetically,” Jury said. “He said it’s like drinking from a firehose for the first six months. Definitely that’s how it feels. You have to make do, and just put your head down and put in some hard work and some long hours, absolutely. You know that going into the role.

“At the end of the day, whatever you did today informs tomorrow, and everything becomes easier little by little.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com