Every sport comes with the possibility of an injury whether you like it or not, and thankfully athletic trainer Conner McLaughlin helps out every athlete at our school with their injuries here.
McLaughlin grew up in the Bay Area of California and always wanted to do something medical while growing up. He first wanted to do nursing but that didn’t work out.
“I initially wanted to go to school for nursing but took a chemistry class in college and I said no nursing for me,’” McLaughlin expressed.
He then looked towards athletic training because he loved athletics and played sports growing up.
“I learned about athletic training in college and I immediately fell in love with it and from then on I knew exactly that’s what I wanted to do.”
McLaughlin really started with mass applying to jobs and landed a job at Providence to work at a high school, which is what he wanted.
“When I heard that this position was a high school position, I really wanted this job,” McLaughlin said.
Before his job here, McLaughlin used to work at Jesuit as an athletic trainer. He pointed out that the sport culture is very different from ours.
“Almost every single kid that comes in [at Jesuit] is a D1 prospect so there’s much more pressure to get them out there in the long run,” McLaughlin said.
While at McDaniel, McLaughlin pointed out that our sport culture is about the love of the sport.
“They just really love playing the sport which is what I love as an athletic trainer,” McLaughlin said.
He also expressed how he felt about the job overall and if he liked it here.
“So far I do actually love it here. Athletic directors are nice. They really helped me with this job and all the fall sport coaches have been really nice to me too,” McLaughlin said.
There are setbacks when it comes to his job, such as equipment when it comes to other schools.
“If you say ‘I want tape,’ [at Jesuit] they’ll have it at your doorstep within the next minute, here I have to do a lot more hoops to jump through to get tape,” Conner said.
He also pointed out the budget difference between different types of schools.
“I have a budget restriction that I’m almost already at, with Jesuit in the sports industry there are no restrictions when it comes to budget and I’ve had to get used to that too.”
While there have been setbacks for McLaughlin in his position, he still loves it and loves our culture. So if you ever sadly get an injury due to playing your sport, look no further than our new athletic trainer, Conner McLaughlin.
