Pittsburg State University suffers athletic training shortage

By Lilli Weir and Matthew Parrot

PITTSBURG, Kan. – Phil Carr, associate athletic director at Pittsburg State University, has been in the athletic training field for more than 40 years. Directing athletics is a job that is supposed to consist of things such as directing and managing a university athletic training staff. Despite his title, he finds himself in the position he has worked all of his life—providing athletic training care to college students.

“We are working with a staff of only three athletic trainers out of the five we would like to have at the university,” Carr said. “Because of this, I am helping to cover most home events seeing as we need the extra hands.”

The three trainers at the university do have to divide themselves between sports. Ty Campbell is assigned to both women’s and men’s basketball teams. Kyle Williard is assigned to both baseball and football, while head athletic trainer Kevin Kalm is in charge of football and overseeing the whole athletic training program. That leaves six sports teams at Pittsburg State without full-time athletic trainers. With the addition of women’s soccer as a varsity sport in the fall of 2024, that number will climb to seven.

Campbell is in his second year at Pittsburg State and has been in athletic training for six years.

“The addition of sports means the addition of trainers,” Campbell said. “This fall when the new soccer program starts, we will need to fill six positions on the training staff,”

Issues with athletic training staffing are not just specific to Pittsburg State. According to the National Athletic Training Association website, there are over 1,000 job openings for athletic

trainers across the country. The website also states that $41,100 was the 25th percentile salary for Division II athletic trainers in 2021.

Caitlin Long, a former graduate assistant and athletic trainer at Pittsburg State, left the university to take a new job in the middle of the 2023 school year. She is now one of 14 athletic trainers at Sacramento State University.

“Athletic trainers are being overworked and underpaid at every level,” Long said. “Until there is proper compensation in the profession, it will continue to suffer, and will lose a lot of capable athletic trainers to careers where they can maintain a better livable wage and have a realistic work-life balance.”

Long is not the only athletic trainer to have left Pittsburg State for a higher-level job. At the end of 2023, former Pittsburg State athletic trainer Natasha Bieker took a job in assistant athletic training at the University of Kansas.

According to Carr, this has been normal in the athletic training field for the past few years.

“A lot of it is upward mobility,” Carr said. “People are not moving to work up at a Division II, they are just going straight to a higher paying Division I program where salaries are higher and positions are open.”

In the past, a person needed to get a Bachelor of Athletic Training degree to qualify for the certification exam needed to become an athletic trainer. Starting this year, except for a few graduating classes exempt due to the transition, a Master of Athletic Training is needed to qualify for the certification exam.

“With the transition of bachelors requirement to the now masters requirement, program numbers have gone down,” Carr said. “The number of students who can get into the programs has decreased because they are masters, therefore the number of students coming out is lower than it has been in the past.”

Despite worry that the number of athletic training students will soon be at a decrease, the Board of Certification for the Athletic Trainer reports that the number of newly certified athletic trainers has remained stable during the new transition, and that there has been a notable increase in students admitted and graduating athletic programs.

Carr hopes Pittsburg State’s issue with athletic training staffing is to be resolved by the fall of 2024, possibly with their connection to Freemen Medical Center. Freemen has agreed to help place athletic trainers at the university and employ three of the six athletic trainers they wish to have.