Another myth busted. I managed to see so many college athletes over the years graduate, go to the pros, not get to go to the pros, play overseas, end their careers, start new careers, move all over, get married, have families and managed to hide those little sniffles and tears of joy and sadness because I felt like I had to. I was supposed to be The Sports Massage Therapist right? Where were my ethics, my boundaries, my professional distance? I had to be strong – I couldn’t let that armor down.
January 27, 2001 is indelibly etched in my brain. It was a Saturday night. The Thursday night before, Christopher, myself and one other Massage Therapist spent the evening working with the OSU Men’s Basketball Team. During Basketball season we usually took four Massage Therapists but, for some reason we did not work with the Women’s Basketball team that night, maybe they were out of town. The Men’s Basketball team was having a great season, everyone was in good spirits and looking forward to their next game in Colorado. Then Saturday night after their game in Colorado, the plane crashed. Christopher called me and told me to sit down. We lost 10 amazing men that night. There is crying in Sports Massage. We had worked with this program since 1995, we knew the coaches, the trainers, the managers and we knew the players. We knew and had worked closely with 6 of the 10. Click here http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/columns/story?columnist=gottlieb_doug&id=6058906 for my favorite article about The 10.
The tears didn’t end though. What followed was an emotional few weeks, filled with memorial services and funerals. The Athletic Trainers made sure we had the information, they made sure we knew we were included and expected to sit with them. Even that made me weep. We will always ‘Remember the 10’.
The only other times I bawled, cried real tears and even sobbed, was when I left The Oklahoma State University Training Room and The University of Tulsa Training Room for the last time this past January (2012). We do miss working with the Universities, High Schools – teams that we had worked with the last 17 years. We really miss the Athletic Trainers and hope to meet some here in PA. We don’t miss working with athletes though – they are still on our table. Maybe it is a tiny gymnast, a local volunteer firefighter that works out at the YMCA, or an older person that has a walking regimen. They are still athletes to us, and we are their Massage Therapists.
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