50 Padre Athletes Screened By Agile Sports Medicine for Injury Prevention

Thirteen physical therapists from Agile Physical Therapy spent the afternoon with Serra football players conducting movement analysis and injury prevention screenings to glean data that could help student-athletes reduce injury and enhance sports performance.

The two-hour clinic had 50 students move through 13 stations in the school's gymnasium, where physical therapists assessed different movement patterns, tests and measures for scores that will be tallied and anaylzed for each athlete. This data will then be provided to the Serra Sports Medicine Department for injury rehabilitation and prevention.

According to Stacey Sbutega, an Agile physical therapist, this type of individualized athletic screening is typically found in the professional sports arena.

"This type of screening is seen in professional sports, but we wanted to do something for the community and we find it so critical to catch injury before it occurs. We want to do all that we can to keep student-athetes healthy," Sbutega said.

Serra Padres Head Sports Medicine Trainer Duke Meek, this opportunity is a tremendous help to his sports medicine team. He said he was extremely grateful to Agile Physical Therapy for volunteering their time and resources to invest in the student-athletes at Serra.

"This type of focus on our high school athletes is very high level. It is so important for us to identify where an individual is lacking in mechanics or shows weakness in the body. This helps us to help them reduce injury," Meek said.

Based on the scores, evaluations and videos from each station, the Serra sports medicine team can identify areas of fatigue in an athlete that might increase the likelihood of an injury. Meek said that this information will be provided to the strength and conditioning coaches so that the weaker areas of a student-athlete can be targeted and improved.

"This helps us in training, rehab, strength and conditioning," Meek said. "For instance if an athlete is weak in the hips, we might see more knee or hip injury -- having this data will help us to strengthen this area in hopes of decreasing the risk of injury."

Serra Athletic Trainer Kevin Attard said that today's concussion diagnosis is hugely valuable in treating an athlete post-concussion.

"They are essentially providing a test that will give us a baseline measurement. So if an athlete suffers a concussion we have another tool," Attard said.

Serra Sophomore Xander Eschelman was impressed to see all the measurements for the different movement tests.

"It was pretty cool to do all the tests and see the measurements - it is so advanced for high school," Eschelman said.

Agile Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine is a private clinic specializing in comprehensive evaluation and treatment of musculoskeletal injuries. Agile also offers concussion care, sports physical therapy services, injury prevention, performance training, wellness and fitness.