Louisville Univ. students work in sports

You think Spring Break and images of MTV on the beach in Panama City, Florida or Negril, Jamaica might spring to mind. But for more than sixty students from the University of Louisville in Kentucky, their idea of a hot spring break was coming to Belize to conduct physical conditioning and training workshops for coaches. The aim is to teach prevention and treatment of sports related injuries to the men and women who are the first to help injured players on the field.

Dr. Margaret Pentecost, Workshop Facilitator

“When you are playing sports, it’s, I wouldn’t call it high risk, but there is a time when you are at more risk. Injuries do occur doing sports and it’s really important that someone right there on the scene is trained to be able to react quickly to take care of that person until medical help arrives. And so we try to be that bridge, we consider coaches the first line of medical care.”

Janelle Chanona

“Specifically, what kind of skills are you talking about?”

Dr. Margaret Pentecost

“Skills for example, how to treat strains, sprains, broken bones, lacerations, or a cut, how to take car of an injury with blood, also how to splint. In the case of an injury that’s life threatening, like if the heart stops or the heart attack, how to do C.P.R. and do rescue breathing if there is something like lodged in the throat or something like that.”

This is the fourth time Dr. Pentecost and her group have come to Belize to conduct training workshops.