Historically, much of TSL’s sports coverage has involved the athletic performances of the Pomona-Pitzer (P-P) Sagehens and the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) Athenas and Stags each week. While that attention is well deserved, the students behind the scenes, keeping the game moving, deserve credit as well.
Look to the P-P football team and the training room, for example. They currently employ three student athletic trainers — Mia Lopez PZ ’26, Natalie Murguia PO ’26 and Marie Milton PO ’27 — to aid the college’s athletic training (AT) staff for practices and games.
Full-time football AT Lane Fishburn described how integral the three Sagehens are to her gameday operation, allowing her to spend more time watching the field and tending to injured athletes.
“We have three roles,” Fishburn said. “There’s a bench, you’re just doing water. Then, there’s the sideline — I call it the roamer. They’re going up and down the sideline, helping the bench when they need it, helping on the field when they need it, playing different roles. Then, there’s the AT assistant. The AT assistant is with me the whole time, doing whatever I need.”
This season’s AT assistant, Lopez, has been called upon on multiple occasions during potentially major on-field injuries. Her job was to relay Fishburn’s needs to the other Student ATs so they could act quickly to help the injured athletes. In one such instance this season, when the Sagehens played the La Verne Leopards, a Leopard went down with a possible fractured tibia.
When Fishburn and Lopez arrived on the field, Fishburn communicated to Lopez, who radioed to the sideline, where Murguia retrieved a splint bag and ran onto the field. At the same time, Milton got the cart to bring the player off the field, showcasing the trio’s ability to communicate and act in sync.
It is that communication that Lopez sees as something she will carry forward, along with her ability to help her teammates rehab and avoid injury.
“I learned some information about common and uncommon injuries and rehabilitation practices, how and why they work,” Lopez said. “I can pass it on to my own teammates for them to find ways to care for themselves. In some ways, I think I also improved on my communication skills, especially being in intense emergency positions. Clear, fast and effective communication is extremely important.”
Beyond the field and the training room, both Fishburn and Lopez acknowledged the relationships that the many hours of work have led them to develop. Fishburn appreciated getting to know student-athletes out of season and on a deeper level.
“You just get to know them as people,” Fishburn said. “You get to see them grow. You get to be like a mentor. Get to be closer to them. The students that are working with you, it is nice getting to know them as real people, and not just here for a season.”
For Lopez, her time in the training room has been the highlight of her college experience.
“I didn’t imagine being a part of the AT staff or even just the football team,” Lopez said. “But all my experiences with the team and the ATs have made my college experience even more special and [made] me extremely grateful.”
The student athletic training program was put in place to assist the ATs with the football team’s 90-plus-person roster, which often overwhelms the training room, whether they need taping before practices or water during the game. But it has another purpose too. For Milton, a junior on a physical therapy (PT) track, the student AT role has set her up to succeed in her future career.
“It is a good experience for someone who is on the AT or PT track like me because it gets you acclimated with the environment to help you confirm if this is really what you want to do in life,” Milton said. “It really does require a lot of time commitment and to make sure that you know your schedule and what you can handle, because although I really enjoyed it, I was really busy with being a football trainer as well as balancing my own sport, softball and my academics.
The student athletic training program offers more than help to the trainers — it offers connections with dedicated full-time staff on campus. For those at the Claremont Colleges, which may lack certain professional pathways, the opportunity can provide skill development for those pursuing AT or PT jobs after school.
For those who are pursuing a career in the field, two of the student ATs this year will be graduating in the spring, but the spots fill up fast.
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