MENASHA, WI (WTAQ) – One Fox Valley high school is leading the way when it comes to providing the best in student-athlete safety.
Menasha High School was recently named a first-team Safe Sports School by the National Athletic Trainers’ Association.
“We’re the only school in the Fox Valley that has this recognition of a Safe Sports School, so I think that is really neat and something to be proud of,” says Anna Linstedt, a licensed athletic trainer with ThedaCare at Menasha High School.
Linstedt has been at Menasha High School for eleven years and truly was the driving force behind this effort.
She recounts what she told the administration in summer about the very real opportunity to achieve this standard.
“We have the majority of this already in place over the eleven years that I’ve been at that school,” she said. “Then, it was looking at all of the boxes that need to get checked.”
Those boxes are wide-ranging and come from nine areas of focus that pertain to the first-team standard.
In order to achieve that standard, a school needs to take significant steps towards keeping athletes safe.
Some of the areas of focus include proper maintenance of athletic equipment, injury prevention strategy, emergency action protocol, and nutritional education.
After an extensive process to ensure the school provided excellent service in all the necessary fields, Linstedt was rewarded by earning the designation.
“To have it on paper is a huge accomplishment,” she says.
Eleven years with the school has allowed Linstedt to develop a rapport with both the student-athletes and their families.
“It’s the relationships over the last eleven years that they trust my judgment, they trust my training,” she says.
And with those relationships comes a passion to provide expert service from beginning to end.
“You never want to see a kid get hurt,” explains Linstedt. “But if they do, I want to be there and get them through recovery.”
And this designation should work to provide Linstedt, school officials, athletes, and parents all peace of mind.
“We can say, ‘Yup, we’ve checked all of the boxes, we’re doing everything in our power to keep these athletes safe,’” she explains.
The school can boast to be the first in the Fox Valley to gain this recognition, but also to be added to a very short list across the state.
“Out of the 400-ish high schools in the state of Wisconsin that offer athletics, we are one of twenty schools that are recognized as either first-team or a second-team,” explains Linstedt.
