
How to manage the bane and beauty of injury

Claire Coates (AT ‘09) was 10 years old when she witnessed a severe injury for the first time.
She was visiting extended family in Richmond, Virginia, and they’d stopped at the post office. As her father was leaving the building, he tripped and landed on his knee. The impact shattered his patella into 15 pieces. Shards of bone ripped through his ACL.
To this day, the image of her father’s knee at the time of his injury is still seared on Coates’ brain.
“I've seen many things fractured and dislocated since then ‘cause it's in my line of work,” says Coates, who now works as an athletic trainer with U-M Athletics. “But that first one you never forget.”
The experience of seeing her father go through orthopedic trauma and the rehabilitation process makes up the origin story of Coates’ future career, and it’s one she shared as part of a talk at the TEDxUofM conference on Feb. 9. Through the lens of injury and, as she says, “the bane and beauty” of such incidents, she encouraged the audience to figure out how to tap into their own resilience amid adversity.
Coates has had to do that plenty of times herself during her career, and she gave us a few tips to pass on to athletic training students as they learn how to help their patients manage the visible (and invisible) scar tissue that can come with injury.
- Be adaptable. “Opportunities to adapt can come in the form of last-minute schedule changes, rain delays during games, etc.,” Coates says. “Or you see someone during the rehab process on a Monday, and you think you have a plan for Wednesday, but the plan you had isn’t going to work because they slipped on the ice outside in between Monday and Wednesday. If you get creative, you can better support the needs of your patient, team, or clinic.”
- Try to see the big picture. “Be able to say to your athlete that you may have this injury and it’s awful, but you’re also going to see this transformative process happen within yourself to develop your own level of resilience and understanding and see what you’re capable of,” Coates says. “The flip side of that is also understanding that for instance here in Ann Arbor, right up the hill, there are children at Mott Children’s Hospital who just got diagnosed with cancer. So seeing the big picture is also about putting things in perspective and helping your patient see that. There are other things going on in life.”
- Have a sense of urgency. “Every minute spent without implementing urgency for your patient is a drill or rep missed during practice, which impacts their ability to contribute on game day,” Coates says. “As it was presented to me as a student, even a routine cold needs to be addressed with urgency. Not doing so may impact whether or not their teammates can hear them on the field. Sense of urgency becomes even more important when responding to an emergency. But having a sense of urgency is something that can’t be taught. You have to demonstrate it. Or someone has to give you the feedback that you’re not hustling enough or this was due yesterday. That’s something I tell my current athletic training students when I do an orientation with them. If you see me doing it faster than what you just did, that means you can do it faster, too.”
Focus on building relationships and helping people, not chasing a specific sport. “When I first interviewed at U-M, I walked in knowing everything I needed to know about the track and field program,” Coates recalls. “But when [senior athletic director] Darryl Conway was driving me around campus, he asked if I had interest in any other sports because there was an opening with field hockey that became available the same day.
I ended up coming back to campus two weeks later for an interview with the field hockey coaches, and here I am [with that team]. I knew very little about field hockey prior to accepting the position. Fortunately, I worked with soccer at my previous institution so I understood concussions, lower extremity injuries, and hip/low back issues. Everybody has a body, regardless of the biomechanics or the sport involved. I realized I wanted the position to work with a diverse group of people, have access to resources and continuing education, and learn from some of the best clinicians in the field. You’re going to learn the sport, regardless of what it is. But if you want to be somewhere, be there regardless of the sport assignment.”