Several members of the Venice Sports Medicine team will participate in two upcoming competitions, one local and the other in Washington State.

This year, 19 students will go to the St. Francis Sports Medicine Competition in La Cañada Flint Ridge on April 16, and 16 will go to the Washington Career and Technical Sports Medicine Association Competition in Kennewick, Washington.

All students on the team qualify for the competition, but they must prepare before they compete. First they are divided into two teams, Varsity and JV. Then they must study their categories that they’ll be tested on, as groups for couple of hours each week.

Junior and sports-medicine worker Peter Park is a returnee to these competitions.
“I have to do a presentation in front of 600 hundred with five other people,” said Park. “I feel nervous, but I am excited.”

If you’re an injured Venice student, the place you should visit is the Sports Medicine team in Shop 6. There, Ms. Kirsten Farrell, a certified athletic trainer, teaches Venice students sports therapy during the day. After school, she teaches sports medicine as a seventh period either on the fields’ or courts’ sidelines. The team doesn’t only take care of sports injuries; members are also taught how to be prepared for any emergency that is thrown at them.

In these competitions, the team will be tested on different categories: anatomy and physiology, exercise physiology, medical terminology, and CPR emergency responses.
Also as a team, they compete in a forum competition.

“We have to do a 10-12 minute presentation on a sports medicine topic in front of an audience,” said Ms. Farrell.