It’s game day at Kinnett Stadium and the Hardaway Hawks football team is on the field taking care of business. The next play ends with two players’ equipment making very loud contact. One person on the Hawks’ sidelines has an immediate thought.
“Someone’s not going to get up.”
And that is when Danielle “DJ” Johnston begins to take of another kind of football business.
Johnston is one of 20 graduate assistants in the Athletic Training Fellowship Program of the Hughston Foundation. Eight Muscogee School District schools along with three out of county high schools and one private school benefit from have athletic trainers on site during sports practices and athletic events. The Columbus Lions and Chattahoochee Valley Community College also are served by Hughston athletic trainers.
On this evening, the two players involved in the on-field collision suffer no injuries nor require assistance from Johnston. Unfortunately, that is not always the case but Johnston is prepared in any event. The New York native has been playing various sports since the age of three and attended Dominican College on a volleyball scholarship. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in athletic training and has one specific rule when it comes to providing care for acute injuries.
“I just try to remain calm. The training kicks in but you have to remember the situation requires for someone to be calm. It wouldn’t help for me to be freaking out if the athlete is freaking out,” says Johnston with a laugh.
So how did the 24-year-old New Yorker wind up standing on the sidelines of high school football games in Georgia?
Johnston is the fiancée of Brendan Bonacum, the lacrosse coach at Columbus State University. When he came South, she followed after being accepted in the program at Hughston. Johnston arrived in July of last year and was assigned to Hardaway High School by Andy Grubbs, Director of Athletic Training at The Hughston Foundation.
When asked about the culture shock of moving to Columbus, the easy-going Johnston laughs.
“Not too much. About the biggest thing has been adjusting to the heat. I have been here for a year and I still can’t get used to it,” she says, smiling.
As for her job, well, there are no down sides in her opinion. She says the athletes and coaching staff at Hardaway have accepted her and she fits in not really as part of staff but as someone who brings a different kind of expertise to the table.
Johnston is responsible for covering all the sports at Hardaway from fall to the last of spring. She is on site for sports practices even during the summer. Her experience so far has been a wide range of activities and duties both on the field of play and off.
“Every athlete must have a physical in order to play a sport. I have to make sure they are cleared to play and keep up with those forms,” she says.
In addition, Johnston has to ensure athletes have completed an informational program about concussion injuries. Recently, concussion management has received widespread attention, particularly in reference to the sport of football. The Hughston Foundation supplies their trainers with Impact, a software program that helps educate athletes about concussion injury.
During practices and sports events, Johnston can be found monitoring temperature guidelines for sports activities or return to play procedures following concussion injury, caring for heat-related stress and tending to sprains, strains and even a few broken bones. Hughston provides further services to schools by having one of their doctors assigned to school sports events and the availability of Saturday clinic, where high school athletes injured playing sports are able to see a physician.
Having a physician at games or available to consult is reassuring to Johnston. For Hardaway, that physician is Dr. Michael Tucker, a graduate of Hardaway who also serves in the same capacity for Columbus High School athletics.
Johnston is also a big fan of the Saturday clinic because of the availability of x-ray.
“Sometimes, you just aren’t sure and having an x-ray is the best option. It is pretty great to be able to get that done there,” she says.
During football season, the nature of the sport is such that Johnston is often the lone female in a world of male coaches and athletes. She is pretty comfortable in the role and says she finds she is treated as a medical professional first but has come to learn the best part of her job is working with the athletes.
After one year of experience and going into her second football season, Johnston has learned two other things. One, she’s become close to the sports programs at Hardaway creating a desire to see the athletes and teams be successful, and, the other is definitely a Southern thing.
“I knew about football and have been around it my whole life. Of course, where I come from it was NFL football. Down here, it’s college and high school football,” she says. Laughing and shaking her head, she adds, “It’s crazy how big a deal football is here.”
“Most of what I see during football season surprisingly is lot of ankle sprains and wrist sprains. The athletes are pretty good about following what I tell them. The biggest issue is getting them to give something time. But they are young athletes so that is to be expected.” DJ Johnston
Columbus Valley/Special Feature/August 2015
Danielle Johnston
Athletic Trainer
Columbus, GA
By Beth Welch
Photos by Jerry Christenson
