Courtesy of Ben Vanhouten
Mariners assistant athletic trainer Rob Nodine (standing at right in gray shirt) looks on as head trainer Rick Griffin (crouching) tends to a player injured on the field during the 2007 season.
The job: "I've always been an outdoors person," says Rob Nodine. "I put myself through college working for the Bureau of Land Management as a wildland firefighter." A sports buff to boot, he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in sports medicine from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas in 1992. The following year, Nodine nabbed a position as head athletic trainer for the Riverside Pilots in California, then one of the Mariners' minor league affiliates. He spent the next 14 years working his way up the ranks of the Mariners organization, including a stint with the Tacoma Rainiers from 2002 through 2006. In 2007, he hit the major leagues, scoring a promotion to assistant trainer for the Seattle Mariners. Although Nodine spends spring through fall in Seattle and on the road with the team, he makes his home in Peoria, Ariz., where his wife and two daughters reside year-round.
Q. What exactly does an athletic trainer do?
A. A personal trainer is more in tune with athletic enhancement, and you find them more in the public setting at the gyms, like 24 Hour Fitness or Gold's Gym. But athletic trainers are more medicine-based. We have to go through a lot of undergraduate and graduate work to get a good background in sports medicine.
Q. How does an athletic trainer differ from a personal trainer?
A. A personal trainer is more in tune with athletic enhancement, and you find them more in the public setting at the gyms, like 24 Hour Fitness or Gold's Gym. But athletic trainers are more medicine-based. We have to go through a lot of undergraduate and graduate work to get a good background in sports medicine.
Q. What's a typical game day like for you?
A. I get there about noon. And then the guys start coming into the park from 12:30 on. Between the time that they report to the park until 4:20 -- the time we stretch -- [the trainers do] treatments, injury reporting, injury record-keeping, any work that we need to do in the day-to-day maintenance of the athletic training room.
And then at 4:20 we go out for a stretch. At 4:30 or 4:35, we take batting practice. After that's over, everybody goes in and has a quick meal and prepares for the game, whether it's getting their ankles taped or getting stretched or getting a massage. That's till about 6:50. The game's at 7:10.
If anything should happen during the game, we evaluate the injury, set up a plan for their treatment and make a plan for their return to play. We have two physicians that help us out: an orthopedic physician and an osteopath. And when the game's over, we do any type of post-game treatment that's needed if [the players] sustain an injury during the game. My day usually ends around 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock at night. It's about a 12-hour day.
"If you don't want to get into professional sports, the National Athletic Trainers' Association (NATA) is another resource you can go to for information and job postings. There are athletic trainers that work at colleges, high schools, physical therapy clinics, even in corporate America and the military. I know people who have gotten into athletic training who have gone on to medical school [or to become] paramedics, physician assistants, physical therapists, chiropractors, dentists. It's a good stepping stone to get in, or it's a great profession to stay with and move up through the ranks."
Q. How many trainers do the Mariners have?
A. Rick Griffin is the head trainer, and I'm the assistant trainer. Jason Steere is our physical therapist, Takayoshi Morimoto is our massage therapist and Allen Wirtala is our strengthening and conditioning coach. So there are five of us.
Q. How often do you get a day off during game season?
A. We have a game pretty much every day. There are 164 games during the major league season, and I travel with the team every time we go on the road. So I'm with them for 82 games a season on the road and 82 games when we're at home.
In the major league season, there are roughly 20 days off. But last year we got snowed out in Cleveland for four straight games, so that took up four of our off days. In the minor leagues, there are [fewer] days off. There are 144 games in the Pacific Coast League season. And we had seven or eight days off.
Q. What's your schedule like during the offseason?
A. The hours are way more flexible. I don't go in every day during the offseason. I do a lot of phone calling, contacting players, making sure that they're doing okay with their offseason strengthening and conditioning programs.
Our facility in Arizona in Peoria -- the Peoria Sports Complex -- is open throughout the offseason. There are 17 players that are on our 40-man roster that live in the Arizona and Phoenix area, and they come in to the complex to work out to prepare for the upcoming season. So I -- and several other people that are staffed down in Arizona -- make sure the players are taken care of if they have any questions or any issues, whether it's a health concern or part of their strengthening and conditioning program. We make sure everything's going smoothly so that they're ready to go when spring training comes.
Q. What's the hardest part of the job?
A. The travel and the schedule, I would have to say, are the two hardest things. It all comes back to time away from your family. Some people obviously live here in the Seattle area but still are away from their families for a lot of time. Everybody goes through that, from the players to the coaches to the front office.
Q. How often do you see your wife and kids during the season?
A. I take the opportunity when it presents itself to go down and see my family or they come up here to see me, or if [the team's] on the road and it's close to Phoenix -- I took them over to San Diego last year to visit. Both my daughters are in school. One's six and one's three and a half. When they're out of school, they're going to come up here this year.
Q. What advice can you give hopeful athletic trainers?
A. The Professional Baseball Athletic Trainers Society (PBATS) is a good reference point for anybody who wants to go into the profession or learn a little bit more. I wouldn't say having a master's in athletic training or physical therapy is required, but any further education is nice. I would assume that every organization in the major leagues and the minor leagues now requires their trainers to be certified by the National Athletic Trainers' Association (NATA).
On the PBATS Web site, there are job postings that come up probably every October, November, December -- all the way up through spring training. PBATS also accepts applications for people to inquire about internships with different teams in Major League Baseball. They also offer a scholarship program.
Q. Is a background playing sports necessary?
A. I wouldn't think you'd have to be involved in sports. I think you'd have to have a passion for sports to really have a desire to want to get into this field. You really need to put in the hours in your undergrad [education] and talk to as many people as you can who've been in the field or advisors in the athletic training program to see what the career truly entails.
Freelance writer Michelle Goodman is the author of The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube. She lives in Seattle, where she works from a spare bedroom with her dog Buddy at her feet.
