By Mary O’KEEFE

The Crescenta Valley High School community will soon be celebrating the official opening of their new Sports Medicine building.

The building is located just east of the school’s track and field. The interior of the classroom has been open since the beginning of this school year.  It was funded by Measure S and by a Career and Technical Education grant. The building gives CVHS students hands-on opportunity in the medical field, including physical therapy.

Teacher Junko Nakayama is excited about her new classroom. CVHS is the only school within GUSD that offers sport medicine classes, and the only one with this type of classroom.

Over the years sports medicine has become an increasingly popular career, which has seen advancements not only in the way injuries are treated, but with a proactive process to help protect athletes from injury.

One of the most impressive items in the classroom is the Anatomage, a clinical tool that allows students to see 3D anatomy. They can view skeletal or muscular images.

“For example if I click [the screen] it will give me the name of that [anatomy area] and I can keep moving as it [identifies] more areas,” Nakayama said.

The table will allow students to see how injuries in one part of the body can affect other areas. 

“This is also a dissection table,” she added.

With the glide of a finger, the body can be dissected and areas studied more closely.

Instead of the typical desks and chairs, the classroom has several treatment tables with stools that rock. The students practice taping arms and legs.

“In the other classroom we would have to put two desks together and the students would lie across them,” Nakayama added.

When the rocking stools arrived she was a little concerned students may lose their balance but these seats allow freer movement and actually help with students’ posture.

In the front of the classroom is a large flat screen television that Nakayama can use in many ways including to display her assignments.

“I also use it when athletes are injured on the field. I ask them if I can use the [footage of them being injured] and we show it to my students,” she said. 

Most of the sports medicine students are athletes themselves.

Although this is the first year, students are starting to notice the new building, and the sports medicine class opportunity.

In the future Nakayama wants to develop a rehab session day where students can come to the classroom and learn how to exercise, including physical therapy techniques, and what they can do to prevent injuries. Her students will lead the sessions.

The interior of the classroom was completed by start of school year.  The exterior will soon be completed. There will be a ribbon cutting on Oct. 24 at 4 p.m.

  Mary Okeefe