Rhodie Moss
JULY 2, 2024 — This summer, UTSA Athletics is profiling many of its units to provide an inside look into how each team serves Roadrunners’ student-athletes.
In this edition, we sat down with Rhodie Moss, associate athletics director for sports medicine, to discuss UTSA Sports Medicine.
How does your department serve UTSA student-athletes?
RM: It’s our job to provide the best possible health care for the student-athletes. Whatever is in the best interest of the health and safety of the student-athlete is our top priority.
We utilize our resources and our partnerships, for example with UT Health, to be able to do that. We try to make it as convenient as possible.
What are the most rewarding aspects of your role?
RM: Doing impactful work every single day.
This particular profession…athletic training, it’s the only profession in the allied health professions that we get to see our patient through the full cycle of health. We see them when they’re healthy and performing, we see them at the time of injury, we see them when they see the doctor, we’ll scrub in sometimes and we’ll watch surgeries, we’re post-op, we rehab them through the rehab phase, and we get them all the way back healthy to when they’re playing again. There’s no other health professional who gets to see that.
It’s very rewarding, all that work you do and to see somebody out there who is living up to their potential who is doing what they came here to do and what they love to do. As challenging as this job is, it is rewarding, and I feel like it’s impactful.
What advice do you have for students or student-athletes who might be interested in entering the athletic training profession?
RM: When you simplify what it takes to be really great at a craft or a skill, if you have the ability to get along with people, if you have the ability to learn and you have the ability to work well with others, then I feel like it translates to just about anything you could do.
For student-athletic trainers, if you learn the basics – just like student-athletes – you learn time management, they have to work hard, they have to have passion for what they do and get along within a team environment – all of that translates to any career. When you’re picking your career, you just want to focus on those foundational values. At the end of the day, whatever is going on, you can always fall back on the foundational pieces, and they’ll translate to a lot of different applications.
What kind of educational and experience background is needed to become an athletic trainer?
RM: Those standards have changed over the years. The path that we do now, you have to go to a master’s program. What we offer here with our student athletic trainers, they come and they major in kinesiology with an emphasis in athletic training and then they spend three years getting all this experience. Then, they have to go on to an entry master’s level program and they have to do a two-year program to where they can get certified.
We all have to have a baseline of a bachelor’s and master’s degree. We have to be nationally certified through the National Athletic Trainer’s Association, our governing body, and then in the State of Texas, you have to be licensed in your state. Everyone is, at base, an ATC and an LAT – Certified Athletic Trainer and Licensed Athletic Trainer.
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