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.

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.

 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.

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.