Quay Burnett: The Engine Behind The W

[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome back to Slepton. We are back with another week, another episode. We're your hosts. I'm Corinne Ellington. And I'm Isaiah Wilson. And as always, Slepton is brought to you by Maris, West, and Baker. Advertising agency based in Jackson, Mississippi. So hit them up for all of your advertising needs. And if you're new to Slepton-- When you're new to Slepton, Slepton is a podcast to cover all Mississippi sports. So if you're all new, check us out. We're on Spotify. And we also have a guest, too, right? App and music, too, right? So don't sleep on-- Don't sleep on App and music. I'm a Spotify user, but-- Spotify user, too. And like we mentioned last episode, this episode, we have a very special guest episode. We have Quay Burnett, an athletic trainer from the W. Also known as University of Mississippi College for Women. Yes. Well, University of Mississippi for Women. And a little bit of history. Quay, before we even start, what do you think about the name change that was happened? How do you feel about that? Well, working in athletics, I think it'll help a little bit. But also, as a woman, I do appreciate the history behind the name. So in a little 50/50. Right. I didn't know that, but the W was the first-- actually, in the country, it was like the first government funded school for women. Oh, I didn't know that either. I had to look it up. I didn't know that either. Anyway, we're going to carry on. Before we get on our many tangents, we're about to have Quay. Please introduce yourself to everyone listening. Well, my name is Jacquella Burnett, but I'm better known as Quay. I got the nickname when I was in Jucco. So most people know me about Quay, especially in the Pacific. I graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2019 with my bachelor's of athletic training. I became certified, and I started working at MUW through elite physical therapy in 2019. I then went on to work for a few months at Toyota here in Mississippi as an industrial athletic trainer. It wasn't quite the world for me. I liked the hustle and bustle of the sports. So I came back to the W last year in July, working through Columbus Orthopedics, which is in Columbus, Mississippi. Right, I've heard about them. I'm curious about this Toyota athletic training. How did that work? Those fellas are going to be my first question. We're more like a prevention specialist team. So we will show them how to do different stretches, how they can use different modalities, such as wax, KTTA, and different things that will help them stay on the work floor. They're considered industrial athletes. It was a little different for me. It was a little slow, more scheduled base work. And I'm not kind of used to that. So I just slid on back to the devil. I could see it being more about your legs more than your back. You know, they say don't bend. Yeah, I could see that. I could see that. They had a lot of hand, wrist, elbow, just because they dealt with a lot of power tools. So, of course, back's getting in and out of the cars and stuff. Yeah, that's cool. How did I know that was enough for me? She did not. Yeah, see that could work. I feel like really well if you were an athletic trainer and you were like getting maybe older and you wanted to do something like slower piece. Yeah. Yeah. Also, I know a lot of women in the athletic training world want to have some, want to have kids. And so it's a great way, you know, to be involved in your child's life and have a more routine schedule, especially for the ones who may not have a village to try to help you. Yeah, definitely. No, that's an option for any athletic trainer looking for a more schedule. Right. Better home life. That's actually literally one of the questions I have. And I'm curious about your schedule. Because in athletics, I think, and I think you would agree that the trainers have the worst hours and the longest hours because I have to go to every event to do the stats and stuff. But the trainers have to be there two hours before, at least an hour after in all the practices. It's not just events. It's events plus every single practice ever. And these super early morning practices, you have to be there an hour or four. - Yes. - Your team at the W, is it just you? Do you have people and how do you manage? Probably I'm assuming my school's a little smaller. So we have a smaller team of trainers. How do you manage with the number of trainers you have and the schedule that you have? Last year, it was just me and a couple of parts on people that would come in and help. But this year I was blessed to get an assistant athletic trainer. You have a great Miss Juddy, a Ballsler. - It is. - She's been a tremendous help. - Yeah, I'm an extra set of hands. - Yes, I'm still kind of tough, especially in the fall with just two athletic trainers and having three sports, which will be Miss Women's Soccer, volleyball, or our more so hard sports that would come in the fall. And then we still have cross country, tennis, golf, all of those athletes, along with getting in pre-participation physicals. - Mm-hmm. - Oh, yeah. So yeah, our schedule's in the fall kind of slim pack. I'm sure it's Friday. You know, uplift each other best we can and work around each other's schedule. Just in case anyone has any complex personal life come up, you know, we can't plan for everything. We just try to be there for each other. But yeah, the schedule is definitely hard. I have a two-year-old now. So just planning out a little bit more. I would say, if for anybody want to be athletic trainer, just have to be organized with your schedules and lean on who you can lean on when that time comes. Definitely. - Did you throw out some good advice to the people that want to be at the training center? - You know, I'm a big advocate for athletic training. I'm worried about the athletic training. - There you go. - I feel like a lot of people who do athletic training and I think just 'cause like what we're just talking about, the schedule is so intense. There's a huge passion for it. I think otherwise if you didn't have the passion and be like you probably quit after like one season. - That is correct. - What is your story on when you realized you wanted to be an athletic trainer or like slash inspiration, slash when you were like, this is something that I enjoy and there's a feeling of joy behind it. - My mom reminded me a few, probably I could cut a couple of years ago. When I was in high school, we had an athletic trainer there. I'm from West Point, by the way. - Okay. - A green wave, you know? - Yeah. - But I had an athletic trainer and he was the only person there. And he wasn't able to see about all of the sports most of the time. So it was kind of hard for him to get through. I played softball, so it was kind of one of the lesser sports football in West Point is really, really huge. So he wasn't able to come to a lot of our practices and so I felt kind of neglect and so I would tell my mom, you know, I'm gonna go to school, I'm gonna come an athletic trainer like him and I'm gonna take his job one day, not knowing that it's hard to manage all of those teams. That's, so that time to support my interests in high school. But when I got to Jucco, I went to Edwanda Community College and I was applying to be physical therapy assistant to go to that program. Unfortunately, I did not get accepted, but during my time there, I got to work with our athletic trainers and I grew fun of, you know, working with the athletes. And then I think that's when I realized that physical therapy wasn't for me, I was meant to be athletic trainer. - Right. - So from there, I went on to USM and got accepted to the athletic training program and I've been rocking and rolling with it ever since. - Rock and roll. - Right, right. I was gonna say honestly, physical therapy, we have one more question to come up after this one, but a comment that you said, athletic training, you definitely do it with like sports, whereas like physical therapy, after from other people, they get physical therapy and I think that's like a different, they think it's more like athletic training. - Yeah. - They find other dealing with things that are not sports related and they're not rocking with it. So. - I would just say the ones that want to do physical therapy too, look more so into like the sports physical therapy. - Right, right. - You have to do a little bit more schooler for it, but if you want to work with sports, I would say do sports PT or not regular PT because like you say, you're dealing with the more, the young population and the geriatric population were from the geriatric old. - Yeah. - Yeah. - People. - I had one friend who was like super interested in it and then he found out that. - Well, I had to go to physical therapy once because I have scoliosis, so they made me go for like, back exercises and I pulled up and everybody was like seven years old. I was like, everyone was looking at me like, "Why are you here?" - Why are you here? - Like, don't worry about it. But yeah, I would think just based off the one time I was in a physical therapy space that was a lot of old people. - Yeah. - Geriatric, probably called geriatric. - There were a lot of geriatric folks. - But yeah, so my next question is, so what are some common misconceptions about athletic training and do you have any misconceptions that you hear about from other people about athletic training or do you hear anything that might surprise somebody about athletic training? - So most of the time people say trainers instead of athletic trainers. And so the question then I get, we have a doneness stop here in West Point, it's called point city doneness. And so the lady that owns it, that I was an athletic trainer one day, she's asking me what I do for work. And she automatically thought that I like, just work out the athlete. So more of a personal trainer than a big trainer. And so I had to explain to her, you know, what we do. And then another one is like, our athletes at the W think we can fix anything with them coming in once or twice. So I would say it's not more so of a common one. That's a surprising one for a lot of people. It's become like, we live in a Macawave society. So sometimes athletes don't understand like you have to be consistent with coming into the trainer room and doing what you're supposed to. And it's not like a one stop shop fixed hall. So I think a lot of people think, you know, we can heal them, quote unquote, heal them, you know, in a short amount of time. And it's just not not the thing. - Yeah, I could see that. - It's funny. - That would be me as an athlete. - It's fun when you say microwave, because we talk about that a lot. Like this is a microwave generation where, we're so used to getting like hands with like this, googling things, fighting and stuff like that. But you've got to know that a lot of you takes time. - You've got to get that Cairo every day. Every day you guys come in there. - That is correct. And then my athletes, they hate when I say, you know, you gotta make sure you're stretching. And when I was playing sports in high school, like we always stretch before and after practice. But like now, nobody stretches. And so they hate when I say stretch. - They're gonna get tore up. They're gonna come see you soon. - But you know what I'm saying? They keep feeding for sure. - Yeah, it's speaking of like, you know, coming to see you. What are some common injuries that you see? Like what are the more common ones? - So with Jody working with me, I work with volleyball, women's basketball, softball are my high-risk sports. And then we both split, track seal, cross country tennis. And a lot that I see is low back hamstring. - That is it. - Those are really, really common. I mean, come in like muscle injuries that are cute. My more so, are cute injuries would be shoulder. - Okay. - Wait, this is actually, this is with concussions, which I know you're not talking about, but I just learned this the other day. And I don't know if this is like a universal thing, but Marley Athletics Department was talking about how concussions return to learn is different than return to play. Is that like a universal thing? Like you could technically play after a concussion once you get cleared, but then you have to do something else for like a return to learn in the classroom. Is that a universal thing or is that just where I am? - It's not very common here, I will say that, but I can't see where like your university would say that because most of the time you can return back to the classroom way before you can return back to the field. - Yeah. - Like now a while ago they would say, you know, stay in bed, get you some rest. Now they actually want you to get outside and like walk around. Nothing like that would cause your heart rate to go up tremendously. But just to get your body moving and get your blood flowing, I guess. - Right. - There you go. Yeah, I was actually. - I'm just learning about that. I thought that was interesting. - I've not heard anybody doing that before, but it makes sense and it probably just kind of varies. Like if it's like, we just don't want you to hit your head again, then obviously don't play it, but you can go to biology tomorrow. - Yeah. - Unless your sensitivity to light in like computer screens are very, you know, we just try to keep an eye on that. - And I'm curious about. I originally thought it was gonna be like a sprained ankle. You don't see a lot of sprained ankles? - No, not really. - Okay, I was curious. That happened to me a little bit. - No, yeah. - Out of a lot of injuries, what was kind of the more like challenging ones to help rehab outside of them not coming to see you. - Yeah, it's outside of them not following your directions. What's like the most difficult injury rehab journey that you've faced in your years? - And it doesn't have to be the most challenging. It could be like the most recent. - Or most interesting. - Yeah. - So I'm dealing with, well, my one is, I have a one is basketball player that's coming back from a ACL injury. It was a season injury last year. And she hasn't had an injury that has ever happened to her like this before. You know, strain muscle may be at the most, but this one was a lot more mentally challenging for her. And not only was she just, she was a really, really good athlete, a key player to the team. So it was kind of devastating for her, not to be able to pick up her teammates on the court. You know, just helping her understand that, you know, you can motivate them off of the, as well as you can motivate them on the court. And just getting through mental blocks, a lot of people don't realize that athletic training, athletic trainers deal with the mental aspect of an athlete, a whole lot more than they do with aspects of athlete, especially when it comes down to a season ending injury. Just trying to motivate them to come in and do what they're supposed to do, especially at the D3 level. We deal with that a lot, coaching them mentally more so than like just, 'cause they, most of the time if they're a good athlete, they can do the physical work. It might be a little challenging at the beginning, but being able to them having to see their teammates, go to practice, go to workouts, and they're on the sidelines. You just have to make sure that you're incorporating them into practice as best as you can, whether that's doing things on the side, when they start to do return to play phase, incorporating them into practice, keeping them away from physical contact when they're supposed to be. You just have to get creative in dealing with their mental blocks. You know what's so crazy is in all my years of being a sports, I never thought of that. Like I never thought about that side about athletic training and having to coach them through mental barriers too. 'Cause every athletic trainer I feel like is so close, and you see them all the time, so you really do get like so close with all the athletes like on coach level clothes, like you know all of their names, like what they're interested in and blah, blah, blah. So I bet that's also hard on you guys too, 'cause they're like your friends at that point, 'cause you see them so often. - Yeah, a lot of you think I'm old, so. So a lot of them are in my siblings age, so I try to look at them as if they were, you know, a part of my family. - Right. - Maybe you to a point where, you know, every little excuse you give me, I'll let you quit. I'm gonna push you, you know, your mental blocks, but also having compassion enough to, you know, know, okay, you are dealing with some, you know, kind of tough at that moment in time, but reminding you that you're gonna get through it, you know, you gotta see it through, see it through. So that's like kind of like a, not like a misconception, but I guess it's something that like, - I had no, I never even thought about that. That's such a good perspective. It's kind of hard to, you know, you get, you get schooling on different types of injuries, but how you, you know, it's coming, it's getting more coming to learn about the psychology of it. Of course, we take sports psychology, but when you're actually in there, - Yeah, definitely. Because every person is different, so you can't get taught on, you know, this is what you do for this person. Everybody, right? - Right. - That's kind of really just, if you're able to get through that, that's kind of just a natural gift on the sleep because that's really, so you're right, that's something that you can't teach. Like, can't teach how to deal with different types of people. - Yeah, so that's everybody's different. That's really cool, I don't know. - I've always loved athletic chairs. Like, on the teams, you talk to them, like, like, a parent. They hear all the drama to it sometimes. - Yeah, they're different people. Like, I don't know what it is, and maybe it's just like a job requirement, but every athletic trader is like so nice and like, talkative, but also like, they're like a parent that you're like friends with. They're like, older sister or an older brother, 'cause they're like so nice and chatty, you know, like, oh my god, like, we should go get coffee, but then they're also very like, "Hey, don't do that." Like, oh yeah. - The stuff you do makes like a lasting impression. I remember at Jones, I played soccer there, and there was a woman named Stephanie, who called her Miss Stephanie, and every time I saw her, I was like, Miss Stephanie, Miss Stephanie, you like? - Yes, I do love the trainers at my university, too. I love them, like, they're just good. I think it just takes up maybe just, that's a job requirement. You just have to be really cool. - How cool are you? - Okay, you just learn to deal with people, and then, I know, remind me to, of, like, hair dressers are always really chatty, 'cause they're like around people all the time. It's like that type of thing, or it's like, you kind of have to be a little bit of, like, a chat. A chat, yeah, people's person is a good way of saying it, 'cause you are around people all the time. There's lots of people, too, not just like one person. It's like groups and teams and stuff. But we have something even more around them more than we are, I don't think. - Yeah. We have two more questions. The one is semi goes back to what you're talking about with players who have to recover, and they don't really want to recover. The way that maybe you're telling them to recover. How do you talk or collaborate with coaches, or I don't know if you guys have a straight staff, but anybody else about these players, and, like, the plan that you have, and is there a way you can keep them on track, or is it kind of, like, well, they're grown, and they'll do it if they want to do it. - Just a sprinkle of the last part. You can't make people, you know, the saying is, you can lead a little quarter, but you can't make them drink. - It works. - You have a sprinkle of that in there, but we do have a strength and condition in coach. His name is Coach Cory. So me and him are really, really close. Kind of like a brother, sister, boy. We talk 24/7 about, hey, this athlete got this going on. This athlete has this going on. Not just me saying, hey, this athlete has this injury, but also him coming to me and say, hey, this athlete didn't look too well when they were doing squats in the weight room today. And so that gives me the chance to go up to that athlete and say, hey, you know, do you have something going on? And that also lets him know, hey, they might like can do this specific movement today. Can we get some modifications for this athlete, you know? But it also eliminates the athlete coming up with excuses about, I can't do this because I'm hurt. - Right. - His response is always, well, did you go see Cory? Did you talk to him about it? And it's sometimes he'll even send them during weights, especially like if I'm upstairs, he'll send them up and they'll have to come and tell me who is going on through some, they try to hide it. And sometimes, you know, they just try to get out of it. - Yeah, they'll go right about them, sure. - Well, you guys are ready to go by choice and by obligation. - Yes. - You get hurt? - They're gonna come see you and they are, might be no, hopefully out of wheelchair, but. - Tidding wheel, that was crazy. Some of them, we have some athletes that need to be in the bubble and they are part of his, they will go to their body falls apart. - I have no few players like that is. I knew one of you towards ACL like two times, like one on one knee, one on the other, and the other towards MCL, he just kept coming back. He just kept coming back, it was crazy though. But yeah, so our next one, our last question, and it's what advice would you give young people concerning or not necessarily considering the career and athletic training? - I would say, if you think about it, it's a tough career, but anything that's worth having in life, it's tough most of the time. Look into it, it's a lot of hospitals that have athletic trainers that come to the schools or that are employed directly by the school. Look up with your athletic trainer, that's at your school, that's at your surrounding community colleges or universities. Just so you can shadow to see if that is something that you possibly wanna do. Athletic training is now a master's program. So it is a little bit more education than I had to do, but they're learning about the same thing. I would say it's worth it. We get in terms, and immersive students at MUW. So if you're ever looking for a place to shadow or if it's hours or looking for an immersion site, you can reach out to me or Jodie. Our email is on the Athletics website. We hope to have you at H. - Wonderful, wonderful career. We have fun, but we also work hard. - Yes, you do. - Tell them quacity, tell them quacity. - Yeah, tell them quacity. Whatever program you decide to go to, tell them quacity. - There you go. - That's what's up, that's what's up. - Well, thanks for coming on this week's episode. It's been a blast. I really enjoy talking to you, and that concludes this week's episode, and we will catch you guys next week. - See you later. - God.