Certified Athletic Trainer (ATC)
Strength and Conditioning Coach

EMT, ATC
South Suburban Steers Hockey 1993-2001, Sports Medicine Provider/Strength Coach
Academy of Holy Angels, Richfield MN

2002 Winter Olympics Certified Athletic Trainer for men's & women's ice hockey
Continuing the US Olympic Committee Sports Medicine Program, Stephanie will be working at the Colorado USOC Training Center this June, 2003.

Taking the holistic approach with her athletes—and her profession.
Some portions taken from an article in "Training & Conditioning" by Jim Catalano, Associate Editor

During the school year, Stephanie Smith, a Certified Athletic Trainer/EMT from Bloomington, Minn., divides her time working with the Twin Cities Northern Lights, a local Junior B hockey team in the south Minneapolis area, and serving as Head Athletic Trainer and Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Academy of Holy Angels, a private Catholic school in Richfield, Minn. At both places, she has earned the respect and accolades of coaches, athletes, and administrators. She also has worked USA Hockey tournaments, and with the mens' and womens' hockey program at the 2002 winter Olympics. But that’s not all. Smith is also heavily involved in disaster relief work, frequently enlisting her student-athletes to assist with damage from floods, tornadoes, and other natural disasters in Minnesota and Wisconsin. For her contributions to each of these groups and for encouraging volunteerism, Smith was chosen to receive Training & Conditioning’s "Above the Call Award" for July/August 2001.

Smith was nominated for the "Above the Call Award" by a student-athlete who anonymously sent in a letter detailing the athletic trainer’s achievements. “There are so many other athletes who would write their own reasons for why Stephanie Smith is an excellent Certified Athletic Trainer, but I want to write about how she balances her quest for professional excellence, her passion for preventing and treating those who are hurt (even when she is ‘off the clock’), her joy in training athletes, and her drive to make the world better by living out her faith,” the nominator wrote.

One person who openly recognizes Smith’s talents and dedication is Jim Martin, former General Manager of the South Suburban Steers (which the Smiths renamed the Northern Lights when they acquired operating control of the team in 2003). “She goes above and beyond what others expect,” he says. “She has been working with our team for nearly ten years now. She puts in a lot of hours, comes to practices, and helps with dry-land (conditioning) workouts. She also helps a lot of kids with physical therapy, and works with them in terms of showing them what to do when they’re off the ice.”

For an example of her services off the clock, there was an incident when Smith stayed up all night with a player who had alcohol poisoning during a team trip. “That was a pretty scary night for the team,” she remembers. “After we got back to our hotel rooms, one of the athletes knocked on my door, saying ‘I know this isn’t in your job description, but can you help?’ The student was really concerned about his friend who was having trouble breathing. I feel it’s my job to take care of the medical needs of my team, and regardless if it’s happens away from the sport or even if it's a result of poor choices, I have chosen to be available to assist with whatever comes up. Several years ago I committed my life to serve God whenever, however He wanted, and that includes using my medical training, decision making skills, and the abilty to communicate God's love and hope in emergencies." That may even mean making house calls or staying overnight at a hospital bedside, but she does not view any particular location as her work site especially when working with players who are hours away from immediate family. Smith continues, "Although I used to work inside a church as a youth minister, my life calling is the same, just where I serve God is different.”

So how did Smith end up in hockey sports medicine? Most people associate Halloween with jack o’lanterns and trick or treating, but an unexpected encounter during a hockey game on Halloween, 1993, changed the course of her career and enabled her to find her calling in the field.

“While finishing my bachelor's degree program, I came up to Minnesota in 1992 because Ross Smith, my college sweetheart, and then shortly after moving to St. Paul I accepted a sports medicine internship with the Timberwolves. I was excited at the prospect of specializing in basketball for the rest of my life while volunteering with a local youth ministry,” she says. “On October 31 of 1993, I filled in for a colleague at a hockey game, actually the very first one I had ever worked and only the third I'd even attended. There was a checking-from-behind incident late in the game, causing a severe head and neck injury. It took 45 minutes for the ambulance to get there, so it was difficult to maintain cervical stabilization for a young man going in and out of seizures for such a long time, especially while kneeling on the ice.

“I went to the hospital with the athlete and his family,” she continues, “and about the time the athlete was going up for an MRI, a scuffle broke out in the waiting room between a few members of the two teams. I don’t know what possessed me, but I intervened, and amazingly enough, they actually stopped! After everyone settled down, many began asking about what they described in me as "a quiet strength." I shared with them the hope I have in knowing that God is in control. Through the years many families have indicated that the prayers I'd voiced on their behalf were a tremendous blessing and were just as important as what I provided medically: those families are the ones who have strongly encouraged me to not keep my faith inside when so many are desperately seeking answers and peace.

Smith says, "It was that Halloween night that I discovered that my medical training and my faith naturally work together and are a perfect fit for working in the hockey community. In fact, many athletes and families have told me that they believe that my faith actually makes me a better medical provider and that my emergency skills make me a more effective minister. After catastrophic injuries and traumatic events in the lives of our team members, I want the athletes and family members to know that although I don't have all the answers, they have a friend and medical provider who will stay with them as they search."

With no experience or connections in hockey, it may seem strange that Smith decided to enroll in graduate school, to pursue hockey internships, and to begin a quest to read every scientific journal article she could find about hockey sports medicine. "There are a lot of other athletic trainers who would actually prefer to work with non-collision sports. Yet that night something just clicked and I recognized that God has equipped me for dealing with potentially life threatening sport emergencies, so a collision sport like hockey would be a natural fit. When split decisions need to be made, somehow I have been able to keep my head, arrive at solid solutions. My primary medical interest is in head injuries, and, sadly, this is a sport where I've had more than ample opportunity to put my skills, education, and faith to work."

For her dissertation, Smith has been conducting research on head injuries in hockey. “I have been tracking them across the age levels, beginning with younger kids, then high school, and moving up to the Junior B and A, and college levels,” she says. “I look at the incidents, their frequency and severity, and how compliant the players are in telling either their coach or medical staff when they have any signs or symptoms, because many times concussions go unreported. I’m trying to find trends so that we can help prevent second impact syndrome, retirement from sport due to multiple concussions, and longtern disability.”

Smith’s abilities have caught the attention of USA Hockey, which has utilized her skills at several national tournaments. No idle academician, Smith has already been putting her research to work. “She’s not only been someone who has provided care to the injured players,” says David Tyler, a Vice President of USA Hockey and Chairman of its Junior Council, “but she has provided us with some valuable advice and recommendations as far as how to avoid those types of head injuries and what should be the protocol for their care.

“Concussive injuries are a major concern for our sport, at all levels,” Tyler continues. “Stephanie helped us deal with a number of concussions we had during our tournament two years ago, and in protecting the athletes from further injury. She also helped to develop protocols that have gone forth from that tournament and now have become rules of USA Hockey. We have instituted a head-checking rule this year as a result of the things she was instrumental in helping us realize and develop.”

In a further effort to minimize injuries from hockey, Smith is trying to establish guidelines to ensure there’s adequate medical personnel and equipment at events. “Many youth tournaments and even high schools do not have a designated medical provider,” she says. “If they do, they might have people who are moonlighting and don’t bring supplies with them, so even if they’re adequately trained, they may not have access to gloves or bloodborne pathogen spray on site. Those who are in tournament management could benefit by knowing what supplies they should have on site and some protocols to make the sporting events safer. I just want to help them be prepared, including knowing the difference between a first responder, an EMT, a paramedic, and an athletic trainer,” she says. “After learning what the scope of medical practices is for each profession, what the liabilities are, and what each of those groups is formally equipped to offer, league leadership and tournament directors can hire the level of medical training they feel is necessary.”

Smith began her tenure at the Academy of Holy Angels in the fall of 1999. While working with a Steers student-athlete who attended Holy Angels, she began helping out in the school’s weight room. Then, a position opened up for a strength and conditioning coach, and Smith formally came on board. Her first goal was to increase participation by the school’s student-athletes. “We had a whole new weight room put in by Milt Sunday, a Holy Angels alum who played for the Vikings and owns Body Power Exercise Equipment, but no one was using it,” says Gary Rufsvold, former Director of Activities at Holy Angels. “After Stephanie came in, she worked closely with the coaches, and quadrupled the use of the weight room. We now offer a varsity letter in strength training for students who complete a certain series of fitness tests and participate in competitions.”

“There were only about four or five students who were regularly coming in to lift when I was training the athlete on our junior hockey team who went to school there,” Smith says. “But then a lot of kids started asking me for advice on how to use the equipment. We brought in Swiss balls for core-stabilization drills and ladders for agility drills, boxes for plyometrics, and bungee cords. We just started with a couple of kids, but they were key athletes looking for something more challenging. When they saw the results, the word spread quickly. It’s so rewarding when you see a sophomore kid being taught by a senior how to properly do a drill. My goal is to work myself out of a job by teaching others how to teach others.”

In 2000, Smith added Head Athletic Trainer to her duties at Academy of Holy Angels, where she now works with all sports. “Obviously my specialty and main passion is hockey, but I thoroughly enjoy working with any athlete who wants to train hard regardless of their sport,” she says. Smith especially likes the change of pace by working several weeks of a female summer sport camps and with the strength & conditioning team which represent several sports.

Through her work in the weight room and as the athletic trainer, Smith has gained the respect and admiration of the staff and student-athletes. “She really gets along with younger athletes,” Rufsvold says. “She makes them hold the mark. We’ve got one kid going to Pittsburgh for football, and another to Wisconsin, and they just idolize her.” After several state appearances in multiple sports over the past few years and earning the MN State High School Boys Hockey Championship title in 2002, the Academy of Holy Angels has become known in the state as a premier academic and athletic institution. Smith is especially excited about working in the new AHA weight room and training room that are being constructed in 2003-4 and about watching her former athletes as they move on through the college athletic ranks.

Whether she is conditioning hockey players, treating injured student-athletes, or conducting research, Smith’s faith informs her work, enabling her to take a holistic approach when dealing with student-athletes. “It is not just about treating injuries. It's about treating the whole person, about training and ministering to the whole person,” she says.

One thing that sets Smith apart is her drive to accept new challenges and opportunities, and willingness to prepare for what might be next. Choosing to follow what she thought God wanted her to do in her career and educational plans completely went against the conventional wisdom for how to gain recognition, make a living, or move up the corporate ladder. Some of her choices in the past five years especially seemed to be a little counter-productive and risky in the short-term. Smith chose to intervene in the control group of her research project in order to prevent further injuries, to continually make a deep personal investment in her athletes, to volunteer when groups could not yet afford her services, and to spend much of her limited free time studying and reviewing medical journals. Ironically it was her reputation for thoroughness, her character, and her passion for serving others that actually brought Smith to this point in her career and that last year gave her the ultimate desire of her heart.

Smith says that since she was six years old, she dreamed about someday going to the Olympic games, so working with the 2002 Olympic men's and women's hockey players from around the world was the opportunity of a lifetime. She enjoys recounting memories from Salt Lake City with her athletes as she motivates them to be good stewards of what God has given them, especially their time, their talents, and their passions as they follow their dreams. "God always knows what's best and how to bless you beyond all you can ask or imagine. He knows us so much better than we know ourselves if we'd just listen. The challenge for each of us is to prepared to receive those blessings and opportunities to bless others, to be able to see them, and to have the courage to act." For these reasons, Smith was nominated for this award and others acknowledge that she truly serves above the call.