Seven Hills trainer’s day to day

By Jackson Irby, Law Kennedy and James Levesque

You might wonder who fills up the water at your games and practices. It’s not a teammate or coach. It’s Chad Rairdon, the athletic trainer who has worked for 7 Hills for two years. He has been an athletic trainer for a total of 6 years, including working for The Bengals and the Florence Y’alls. 

On an average day at school, he arrives at 1 pm and sets up water for practice and games. 

He doesn’t go to away games unless there is no athletic trainer. He will go with the teams to tournaments, though.

 At 2:20-2:30 pm after filling the waters, he will then document injuries that happened or plan Physical Training for student-athletes.

At 2:33 pm before practices and games students will start filling in, and the goal is to get therapy kids out and done first.

He calms players down by empathizing with them and knowing how they got hurt; for example, Chad doesn’t let players “get too far down the rabbit hole and think [their] season is over.”

3:30 pm after school, he tapes up students and takes care of stuff that happened last night or that day that he didn’t know about, like treatments and evaluations.

He sees himself working at 7 hills in the future as an advisory role but has aspirations to be a regional coordinator role.

In Chad’s senior year of college at Wellington, he had a 10 month internship at The Bengals.

His work for the Bengals mostly involved field setup. He did treatments on players like ultrasounds (an imaging test that uses sound waves to take pictures of organs, tissues, etc.), ESTIM (a type of treatment that sends electrical pulses through the skin.), and red light therapy (repairs skin and boosting new cell growth.) 

“It’s a mixed bag of everything,” he said while working for the Bengals.

From 2020-2021, Chad worked for the Florence Y’all’s, a professional baseball team in the Frontier League.

Chad treated players—and warm-ups for the starting pitcher.

Chad’s job included being there for anyone hurt during practice or before a game.

Chad also helped the team with field setup and post-game treatments.

Chad played baseball in college. He is a member of OATA (Ohio, Athletic, Trainers, Association) and believes in supporting locally. He sees himself working at 7 hills in the future as an advisory role or a coordinator role.