Angie Cockrell and Julie Titter have lived their field of dreams.
They spent several months at the baseball diamond. And when the campaign came to a close, they were both batting 1000 en route to their future careers.
Angie and Julie recently interned for professional minor league baseball teams.
Angie, a health management major with an athletic training option from New Athens, Ill., interned with the Gateway Grizzlies in Sauget, Ill. For 10 weeks, she treated injuries, supervised rehabilitation exercises for players with chronic injuries, and documented information while under the supervision of a certified athletic trainer.
Angie was part of a team of three interns who worked with the team.
“My favorite part of the experience was the athletes. They were all around my age and had similar interests. The members of the pitching staff were definitely the most interesting group of athletes,” she said. “They, along with my fellow interns (two students from McKendree College) were the most influential persons throughout my experience.”
Julie, also a senior health management major with an athletic training option from Fenton, Mo., worked with the River City Rascals, another minor league baseball team in the Frontier League, an independent baseball league in which athletes are professional but not affiliated with a major league organization.
The Rascals are based in O'Fallon Mo., just outside of St. Charles.
Julie said her internship experience was invaluable.
“I was supervised through my internship, but the certified athletic trainer I was working with allowed me to do most of the injury evaluations and make many of the decisions which helped to make me much more confident in my athletic training skills,” she said.” I also loved the experience of working with a different group of athletes. These were professional athletes I was working with, which was different from experiences I have had in the past.”
Titter is quick to credit Certified Athletic Trainer Larry Sanders for his mentoring and guidance throughout her internship.
“He gave me confidence in myself, and he helped me to learn a lot of different skills,” she said. "The experience was great, and I learned more than I ever expected to.”
Both Cockrell and Titter hope to land a job and possibly enroll in graduate school at a later date. Julie hopes to eventually work with athletic teams at a university.