THE FIVE TOUGHEST JOBS IN SU SPORTS / PART THREE OF FIVE

In a small temporary trailer, 21-year-old Shannon Sibley crouched near a table and took hold of Brittany Richardson’s tender ankle. Richardson, sitting high, winced a little. Throughout the 10-minute ordeal of having both ankles and her right hand wrapped in sports tape, she said she was grateful for Sibley’s services.
“She did a good job on my ankle. It’s well supported,” Richardson said. “Some people do it too tight.”
Sibley is one of 15 sports medicine students who finds treatment for athletes such as Richardson, a Lady Jaguars sophomore catcher, before practice and games. While Sibley, who already has a demanding school schedule, performs her training studies, she has to consider the feelings of others, carry heavy equipment and be punctual to every sporting event. Additionally, she is not just there to warm benches, she must be alert when athletes take falls.
As Sibley, a biology major, continues to work on Richardson’s ankles, she grabs the tape and begins to wrap Richardson’s ankles.
“You have to really love it to do it,” Richardson said, while in close proximity of an athlete’s foot. “It really requires knowledge of sports anatomy – biology.”
Arguably, Sibley has the knowledge of a medical doctor; she just doesn’t have to wear scrubs, because team apparel works fine. According to Alex Hawkins, head trainer and director of sports medicine, the job also requires a lot of traveling (trainers go to every game on team’s schedules) and long hours seven days a week.
“I was a student trainer at Southern in undergrad, so (I know) it’s tough,” Hawkins said. “They not only have to be a good student, but they have to work study where they work a guaranteed six hours every day.”
On one spring evening, Sibley and others treated up to 20 student-athletes. Players bustled in and out of the doors every five minutes or so. Basketball players occupied a table near the door for wrapping while one sat in a whirlpool in the adjacent room. During football season 35-40 athletes visit the training room daily.
During a game or at practice, when an athlete is on the ground, Sibley rushes to the field. She inquires athletes about their ailments, and then figures out how to treat them.
“Working with athletes require a lot of attention,” Sibley said. She works with the baseball team and said the worst injury is when a player gets hit with the ball.
While some people can’t stand the sight of pain. Sibley started on her path when her grandmother died at the start of 1994. She was nine then.
“I wanted to be a mortician,” said Sibley, a Wisconsin native. “My mom said why are you helping the dead, you should be helping the living.”
After the pep talk she changed her focus to forensic pathology, and in that time her brothers Raishaun, 23 (at Univ. of Northern Iowa), and Raymond, 19 (Univ. of Tennessee) played football at major universities. So her passion took off from there.
Which is why now Sibley keeps an eye on Jaguars on the mend.