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When I first get to practice, I head straight for the cooler room to start setting up. There are a lot of different things that need to be remembered for set up. What we need to prepare is determined by where the practice is located and how many people we have working for that day. You need to know how many water bottles to make, how many Gatorade bottles, how many coolers, how many ice chests, how many towels, and how much extra Gatorade to make. All of these things are a part of my declarative memory and more specifically a part of my semantic memory.

Once I have determined how many of each thing we need, I start to actually get everything ready. There are these things that we use in practice called “water boys”. They are small carts that we put our water coolers on. They make it easier to transport the coolers around the field and fill up water bottles from them. There is a specific way that the coolers need to be attached to the carts, and one time someone asked me how to do that. To my surprise, I was unable to verbally tell them how to do it. Instead, I found it easier to go over and show them how I do it. This is a great example of how I use procedural memory at every practice to attach the coolers to the water boys. However, when I went to demonstrate how I do the task, I struggled a bit at first. This event can be considered “choking”. I was trying to consciously analyze the task rather than using my procedural memory.

I chose this picture because it reminds me of filling up almost 100 water bottles and putting caps on them at every practice. It is just one of the many tasks to remember for set up.

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After a full season of being a water girl, I have gained many new closed and open skills. These skills can be classified by Gentile’s Taxonomy of Motor Skills. I can now proudly say that I am able to carry six racks of water at once. This has proven to be a very valuable skill while cleaning up, kind of like trying to carry all the grocery bags out of the car at once instead of making a second trip. This skill would be considered number four in Gentile’s Taxonomy because there is transport, object manipulation, stationary regulatory condition, but no intertrial variability. Another closed skill I have gained is being able to wrap two water bottles perfectly in a towel in a way that allows me to have easy access to the water bottle, but also so I don’t have to hold the cold bottle with my hands. It may seem simple, but it took me many practices to perfect the technique. This skill would be considered number two in Gentile’s Taxonomy because there is object manipulation, stationary regulatory condition, but no transport or intertrial variability. An open skill that I have become very good at, is driving the cart full of supplies. This skill may seem very mundane, but there is more to it than what meets the eye. First off, while driving the cart you need to be aware of other carts and cars driving around. Second, you have to be able to maneuver in tight spaces around new shipments of food and equipment, which are in different places every day. Lastly and probably the most difficult is that you have to hold on to some of the equipment while driving and make sure nothing falls off the cart. This skill would be considered number 16 in Gentile’s Taxonomy because it consists of transport, object manipulation, moving regulatory conditions, and intertrial variability.

My job as a sports medicine student hasn’t been anything like I expected, but I am not even slightly disappointed. I learned so much about the things I am passionate about and I have learned so many new skills that I could not have in the classroom. I truly enjoyed my first year and I look forward to the upcoming football seasons.

I chose this gif because it relates to me driving the cart with all the supplies and shows how fun my job can be.

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Sometimes at practice, there are not enough people to cover hydration for each position group, so sometimes we have to cover multiple groups. When this happens I have to be able to process and respond to many different tasks. There are three parts of processing that can describe how my decision making occurs; stimulus identification, response selection, and response programming.

In order to know who needs water, there has to be a stimulus present for me to identify. Most often this is a visual or auditory stimulus where a player or coach will either wave or yell my name. The identification of these stimuli can be affected by different variables, like intensity for example. I am much more likely to be able to hear my name being called if five players are yelling versus just one. Pattern recognition is another way I am able to identify if anyone needs water. After working a few practices I was able to pick up on how practice is structured. For example, I recognized that after the field goal drill, the special teams group will need water.

Once I have identified who needs water, I have to decide on an appropriate response, which is a part of the response selection stage. If there are multiple groups that need water at one time it can make it more difficult to decide where to go. Usually, I go to the group that either called me first or the group that is the closest to me at that time. This can be considered a learned stimulus-response relationship that can facilitate the response selection phase. Another variable that affects my response selection is spatial anticipation. I know that after the kick return drill the players will be running down the sideline looking for water. Since I can anticipate where they will be I can decide to stand on the sideline to be prepared.

The last thing left to do is to prepare and initiate my selected response, which is called the response programming stage. As the semester went on I got better at responding. My reaction times decreased with repetition. I got quicker at handing out water bottles and putting them back in the rack. Due to repetition, I remembered the muscle program instead of creating a new one.

Below is a video of what practice looks like in the McClain Center. As you can see there are many different things going on at once and many different variables that can affect someone's response time.

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My first couple of practices were extremely stressful and consisted of many mistakes. As the semester went on I became more independent and comfortable in my position. My journey to becoming a D1 water girl can be described by Fitts and Posner’s 3-Stage Model of Learning. During my first couple of weeks, I was in the cognitive stage. I heavily relied on the other workers to tell and show me what to do. I made many mistakes, like putting a cooler where it shouldn’t be or making too many water bottles and not enough Gatorade bottles. Despite the mistakes, I felt like I learned so much each shift. At each practice, someone was constantly showing me something new like how to make Gatorade, where to get clean towels, or which key opens which lock. After the first couple of weeks, I began to move into the associative stage. I started to rely on the other workers less and I knew what my responsibilities were. There wasn’t as much to learn, it was just more of me practicing the things I already knew. I was able to identify if there was an issue, but I wasn’t always able to find a solution. For example, one time there were no ice scoops in the cooler room and I didn’t know where I would be able to find one, so I had to ask. By the time the Big Ten Championship game rolled around, I was a pro. I had moved into the autonomous stage because my actions had become more automatic to me. I knew what to do and how to set up for the various practice settings. I also was able to fix issues that came up by knowing where things were located and knowing who the right person was to contact. The Badger football team may have been playing their best football in November, but I was also on my A-game as a water girl in November. I am not saying there was any correlation, but it is just something to think about.

Below is a picture I took while setting up for an early morning practice. I will always cherish the feeling of stepping into a completely empty Camp Randall and feeling the cool morning breeze.

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For a student with an interest in physical therapy a job as a “sports medicine student” seemed like a great opportunity to gain valuable experience. At the time little did I know that a large portion of my job would consist of me being a water girl, or as my supervisor would say a “hydration specialist”, for the UW-Madison football team. When I accepted the job I remember thinking “How hard could it be? I can hand water to the players.”

It was 6:00 am and I had just arrived at Camp Randall for my first practice. I suddenly became a lot more nervous when I was speed walking with the other workers as they were trying to explain to me everything we needed to do and how practice was going to work. The one piece of advice I kept getting from everyone was, “Just make sure you stay out of the way. If you don’t know what to do just step off the field and figure out where you need to be.” This scared the living daylights out of me and I couldn’t help but think, “What have I gotten myself into?”

During the first practice, I was assigned to the defensive line. I was intentionally focusing on the D-line and making sure they had enough water. In fact, I was so focused on the D-line that I failed to hear the defensive backs calling for water. I only realized this until one player ran into my line of vision and grabbed my involuntary attention. This player was able to grab my involuntary attention because his actions were novel and I wasn’t used to it happening. In this case, I wasn’t able to multitask efficiently. I did a really good job of providing the D-line with water because most of my attention was on them, but as a result, I didn’t do a good job of making sure other position groups had water. I was pretty embarrassed and was unaware of how long they were actually trying to get my attention. Luckily, I was able to laugh it off and I realized that I needed to make an effort to pay attention to other position groups besides just the one I was assigned to.

I chose this gif because I learned from my mistake and I was able to be better at my job because of it.