Athletic training wins national award

For the third consecutive year, Western Carolina University’s athletic training program has won the National Athletic Trainers’ Association Research and Education Foundation Student Challenge for raising more money than any other program in the nation for the foundation’s grant and scholarship initiatives.

WCU's athletic training program includes both classroom and clinical education. The program's students, faculty and staff have been honored for their fundraising work on behalf of the National Athletic Trainers' Association.

More than 350 accredited athletic training programs in the country competed for the honor, said Jay Scifers, the former director of WCU’s program who is now director of WCU’s School of Health Sciences.

A majority of the WCU program’s donation to the NATA-REF fund each year is raised through the annual Mountain Jug Run for Research, a 175-mile relay run from Boone to Cullowhee, Scifers said. Named after the football rivalry between WCU and Appalachian State University, the run last October raised more than $4,000 for sports medicine research and student scholarships.

Each of the 15 WCU runners participating in the event last fall covered 25 miles of the course in 5-mile segments, with two or three runners on the road at any given time. Prior to the relay, the group (consisting of athletic training students, faculty and staff members) trained for 10 weeks, meeting at 6 a.m. four mornings each week to complete runs of three to 12 miles.

For more information about WCU’s athletic training program, contact program director Jill Manners at 828-227-3509 or manners@wcu.edu.