By Izaiah Aragon, MS, LAT, ATC, CPT
Before I started my career in collegiate athletic training, I had a picture in my head of what Division I athletics would look like. Professionalism at every corner. Coaches who valued the medical staff. Athletes who were disciplined, driven, and hungry to compete at the highest level. I expected an environment that matched the prestige of the programs I had read about and trained to work in.
That picture did not survive my first year.
The Environment Nobody Warns You About
Division I athletics is a unique world. The resources are real. The athletes are talented. The stakes are high. But the culture inside an athletics department is something you have to experience to fully understand.
What surprised me most was how human it all was — and not always in the ways I expected. The politics, the dynamics between departments, the unspoken rules about who defers to whom. It is complex in ways that no textbook prepares you for.
I came in expecting the professionalism to match the prestige. What I found was a more layered reality — one that required me to develop my own standards rather than rely on the environment to set them for me.
That was the real lesson. You cannot wait for the culture around you to model what you want to become. You have to decide that for yourself, early.
The Mentorship Trap
I had mentorship. It came with the territory of the job — experienced clinicians around me, knowledge accessible if I asked for it. On paper, I was in a good position.
But here is what I did not understand until much later: proximity to mentorship is not the same as owning your development.
The environment I was in was frantic. Chaotic in ways that made it hard to stop, reflect, and grow deliberately. And in that chaos, I noticed a pattern — my mistakes were visible. My wins were not. Losses were documented, discussed, brought into meetings. Growth happened quietly, if it was acknowledged at all.
That imbalance erodes you over time. Slowly, and then all at once.
What I should have done — and what I would tell any young professional — is seek mentorship outside of your immediate work environment. Not because the people around you are bad, but because you need people who are invested in your growth specifically. People who will reflect your progress back to you when the environment around you cannot or will not.
The Moment That Forced a Harder Question
The clarity did not come the way I expected. It did not arrive quietly.
It came in a meeting. I was told that some of my athletes had expressed a lack of trust in me. That stung — the kind of sting that sits with you.
My first instinct was to internalize it. To treat it as a verdict on who I was as a clinician. But somewhere in that discomfort, I started asking a different question: What environment produced the version of me that those athletes were seeing?
That shift — from self-blame to honest reflection — changed everything. I started connecting the dots. The invisible wins. The absence of real mentorship. The environment that shaped my habits, my communication, my presence on the field. None of it happened in a vacuum.
I am still working through it. That is the honest answer. This is not a story with a clean ending. But the awareness itself is a turning point.
My Protocols Were Not Where They Needed to Be
I will be honest about something that took me longer than it should have to address: my clinical systems were not tight enough in my first two years.
My communication with athletes was too casual — friendly in a way that made it harder to hold the line when it mattered. My rehab sessions lacked structure. Documentation fell behind. And my return-to-play decisions were made more liberally than they should have been.
That last one carried real consequences. Looking back, there were athletes who would have benefitted significantly from a longer recovery window — athletes whose outcomes would have been better with more time and a more conservative progression. That is not something I take lightly, and it is the thing that pushed me to tighten my standards faster than anything else.
What I wish I had done was build my systems before I needed them — not after a mistake made it obvious. A structured rehab format. Clear goals and progressions. Documentation that was current, not something I was catching up on at the end of a long week. An appointment-based system that created accountability on both sides.
I am still refining all of it. But the difference between where I started and where I am now is significant — and it came from deciding that the standard I held for myself had to be higher than the environment required.
What I Would Tell a Young AT Starting Tomorrow
Set your communication standard early — and hold it.
Your athletes are not your friends. You can be warm, approachable, and genuinely invested in them. But the moment the boundary blurs, you lose something that is very hard to get back. Define how you communicate, what you expect, and what you will and will not tolerate. Do it early. Do it consistently.
Expect difficult coaches. Prepare for them.
Not every coach will push back on your decisions. But some will, and it will happen at the worst possible moments — on the sideline, in front of athletes, in front of other staff, in front of admin, etc. Know your response before you need it. Stay grounded in your clinical reasoning. You do not need to win the argument. You need to protect the athlete(s).
Document everything.
Every conversation. Every decision. Every time you cleared or held an athlete. If it is not written down, it did not happen. This protects your athletes and it protects you.
Find mentorship that belongs to you.
Not the mentorship that comes with the job. Go find it. Seek out people in the field who are doing work you admire — people who have no stake in your immediate environment. Your growth deserves witnesses who are genuinely invested in seeing it.
Two years in, I have more questions than answers. But I have learned to treat that as a sign that I am paying attention.
This field will ask a lot of you. Ask a lot of it in return.
Key Takeaways
- The environment will shape you — be intentional about how. D1 athletics is complex and layered. You cannot wait for the culture around you to set your standard. You have to set it yourself. (I’m still working on this)
- Proximity to mentorship is not the same as owning your development. Find people outside your immediate environment who are invested in your growth specifically. Do not leave that to chance.
- Build your systems before you need them. Structured rehab plans, clear return-to-play criteria, documentation that is current — these are not administrative tasks. They are how you protect your athletes and yourself.
- Your clinical boundaries are not personal. Being warm and being professional are not opposites. Set the standard early and hold it — with athletes, with coaches, with everyone.
- Honest reflection is not failure. The moments that forced me to look at myself clearly were uncomfortable. They were also the most important moments of my first two years.
Two years in is not a long time. But it is long enough to learn things worth sharing. If any part of this resonates with where you are right now — reach out. This field is better when we talk to each other.
Izaiah Aragon 