Pioneering Athletic Trainer to Speak About Job Opportunities

Photo Submitted

Marjorie Albohm

Marjorie Albohm was the first full-time women’s head athletic trainer at Indiana University and went on to become president of the National Athletic Trainers Association. She also worked as a staff member of the Olympic Games, Pan American Games, Track and Field Olympic Trials, World Gymnastics Championships and was inducted into the National Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame in 1999.

Albohm now works as the director of clinical research and fellowships for Ossur Americas, the company that built the blades used by Olympian Oscar Pistorius of South Africa, allowing Pistorius to become the first amputee sprinter to compete in the Olympics this summer in London. She was president of the National Athletic Trainers Association from 2008 until earlier this year.

Albohm will talk with graduate athletic training education students at the University of Arkansas on Thursday, Nov. 1 about job opportunities that will be open to them after they earn their degree. Albohm will give a lecture titled “Your Future in Athletic Training: Emerging Practice Settings” at 6:30 p.m. in Room 311 at the Health, Physical Education and Recreation Building on campus. The public is also invited to the free presentation.

The entry-level master’s program based in the university’s College of Education and Health Professions is one of only 27 such athletic training education programs in the United States. The program sponsors a scholar lecture series, each semester bringing in a speaker who is nationally known in the field.

Albohm was one of the first women certified by the National Athletic Trainers Association.

The range of settings in which athletic trainers can practice has evolved significantly over the past 35 years since she was certified, Albohm said, in part because of doors opened by Title IX, federal legislation passed in 1972 prohibiting sex discrimination in education. Other factors include the aging of the baby boomer generation, changing needs in the medical field and recognition by business and industry that athletic trainers can help keep workers fit and healthy. 

"In our history, athletic trainers have been based in team sports settings,” Albohm said. “However, today 47 percent of the members of the National Athletic Trainers Association work in clinical settings. We evolved from taking care of athletes to taking care of physically active people of all ages.”