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As LU's athletic trainer, Racheal Lawler can make a difference for Blue Tiger student-athletes

Julie Smith/News Tribune Racheal Lawler works on Jessica Thompson, a pitcher for LU's Lady Tigers softball during a rehab sesson. Lawler is the head athletic trainer for the university's sports department.

By Tony Hawley sports@newstribune.com

Published: Monday, November 2, 2009 6:01 AM CST

Considering how she feels about training rooms, it's a bit of a surprise Racheal Lawler has picked them to be where she spends most of her time.

“The training room, in my opinion, is a negative place,” said Lawler, the head athletic trainer at Lincoln University. “If you're in the training room, it's bad news. You're hurt, you're not going to play, and you have pain.”

So while it's a bad place for athletes, the trainer doesn't mind it, and she tries to make the best of a bad situation.

“We joke around and have a good time,” Lawler said. “You really get to know the kids.”

And those kids are Lawler's favorite part of her job. But there was an adjustment period when she took the job as Lincoln's head trainer last year.

“There was about a different (trainer) every year for a while,” she said. “A bunch of the seniors last year talked about having four trainers in four years and, 'How long are you going to stay?'”

But Lawler quickly won them over with hard work.

“Getting them to communicate is the hardest thing in the beginning, getting them to trust you,” she said. “They don't know you, they don't know if you're any good.

“You have to earn trust, and unfortunately in our business, earning it comes when somebody gets hurt. Then they watch me work and they go, 'Maybe she does know what she's talking about.'”

Lawler knows what she's talking about thanks to a wide variety of experiences, despite being just 32 years old.

After growing up in Marion, Ill., she did her undergraduate work at Lambuth University in Jackson, Tenn. During her junior and senior years, she had the opportunity to do an internship with the Evansville, Ind., Otters, an independent professional baseball team.

From there, it was on to Long Island University in Brooklyn, N.Y., where she started work on her masters before moving once again. This time it was for a job with the Long Beach, Calif., Breakers, a member of the now-defunct Western Baseball League.

Lawler said it was great working for the manager, former Los Angeles Dodgers great Steve Yeager, but the rest of it was rough.


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