XCP athletic trainer to receive service award

It will be summer soon and Xavier Prep’s Laurie White and her husband, Christopher, will be heading off to New Orleans, otherwise known as The Big Easy.

There is nothing easy about the reason that Mrs. White will be going She and her husband have jobs that are among the toughest around – as athletic trainers. She is in her 11^th season at XCP and her husband has been at neighboring Brophy Prep for more than three decades.

Xavier athletic trainer Laurie White.

Athletic trainers must have a great deal of energy and maintain it throughout the day, every day, and sometimes on weekends.

A typical day has Mrs. White teaching some sports medicine classes, helping Xavier athletes get ready for a game for practice by taping their knees, elbows, ankles and nursing their wounds, advising the two college athletic trainers who assist her during the year, being ready to spring into action at the games (both with Xavier and visiting teams) and cleaning up afterward.

She also finds time to serve in various capacities with the Arizona Athletic Trainers Association, where she was elected to the organization’s Hall of Fame in 2015.

It is all about service – serving her students, athletes, coaches, other athletic trainers and her community in general.

In New Orleans at the National Athletic Trainers Association annual symposium, she and her husband will receive that organization’s Service Award together onstage. Nominations are through the Arizona association.

“If an athlete gets injured, it is rewarding to help get them back onto the field and have them play healthy,’’ Mrs. White said. “We want to help them out in whatever way we can.’’

Before coming to Xavier, Mrs. White worked in the Phoenix Union High School District (primarily Alhambra) and has had several of her students move on into the athletic-training profession, which is not the same as a sports trainer that supervises workouts at gyms, etc. One of Mrs. White’s most recent athletic-training students at Xavier, Isabella Johnson, is completing her freshman year at the University of Michigan.