September 26, 2025 • 27 mins
Kassie Friend – Certified Athletic Therapist, Active Therapy + | Episode 37 | Sudbury Interviews | September 26, 2025 | Host: Dani Star (Canadian Idol, Season 5) | Find us on Sudztown and join the conversation | If you would like to be a guest on the show, please reach out | Listen on: Sudztown | YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | iHeart Radio | Pocket Casts | Amazon Music | Audacy | Audible | Listen Notes | Overcast | RSS Feed| Website: https://sudztown.com/show/
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hi everyone, welcome to Sudbury interviews.
Today we have Cassie friend she's a certified athletic
therapist working with active therapy plus on Lawrence St. and
we'll be discussing her career today.
Before we begin, you can find uson Sudstown and join the
conversation. If you would like to be a guest
(00:20):
on the show, please reach out. Hey, Cassie, how you doing?
I'm. Great.
How are you? Great.
Thanks for coming on the show today.
I'm really excited to be here. So what does a certified
athletic therapist do? So the best way to describe it
(00:40):
is I like to say that if at least for me personally, I treat
very similar to a physiotherapist.
So I do a lot of clinical work. So I do a lot of hands on soft
tissue work, muscle release, a lot of exercise prescription.
That's a big thing, working on strength and mobility as well as
(01:04):
different types of modality machines just to help people of
any athletic ability or career or age get back to any sort of
activities that they like. The one main thing that sets us
apart from say, other health professionals like
physiotherapists and chiropractors and all that is
(01:27):
you will often see us on sidelines of sporting events.
So I work a lot with local and provincial sports teams,
providing emergency care and injury prevention techniques and
first aid to multiple different levels of sports.
(01:50):
Great. Are you seeing?
So when people get hurt at sports games, you're there to to
support them. Yes, so say someone goes down in
a football game on the field, I would be the first one to run
out to make sure that a what they're dealing with isn't a
(02:13):
life threatening emergency. So if that's the case, then I
make the proper calls and I handle it until someone more
qualified like a paramedic wouldarise.
But if it's something more like you rolled your ankle and now
it's sprained, OK, well, let's safely get you off the field to
the side. Let's assess if it's if I think
(02:36):
it's broken or if it's just a sprain.
And then some things to just make the pain manageable.
See if it's safe for them to return to the game or if further
follow up is necessary, like say, going to the hospital for
X-rays. So when you're, when you're
going to school, you're, they'retraining you on how to identify
(03:01):
these like these wound wounds orwhatever.
Yeah. So this program, in order to
become an athletic therapist, most programs are four years in
length and we go into quite a bit of detail in terms of the
entire musculoskeletal system. So all the muscles, bones,
(03:22):
joints, all of that, as well as a lot of different emergency
procedures. So actually in order to be a
certified athletic therapist, you also need to be a certified
first responder within Red Cross.
So we are updating those skills,some of them yearly and some of
them every three years to make sure we're always prepared for
(03:45):
emergency situations like that. Great.
So this is this is a neat littlequestion here because I honestly
don't know the answer to this, but what what's a concussion in
a general sense? Like what is that when that
happens to someone? So a concussion really is a type
(04:06):
of mild traumatic brain injury. So what a lot of people don't
realize is concussions can actually happen without you
directly hitting your head. So it could be a jolt where you
fall or anything that really causes your brain to move within
(04:29):
your skull and cause changes in with how your brain works.
They're really technically invisible, like you can't see
them on say ACT scan. So some people think, oh, you
can't see them, they're not thatserious.
Well, no, they are. They can be very serious and
(04:50):
there's lots of different symptoms and severity and really
everyone's different when it comes to what a concussion looks
like for them and how it affectsthem.
It's great. Yeah, that makes sense to me for
sure. So you did your schooling at
(05:12):
Laurentian, right? I did my first degree at
Laurentian, so I went to Laurentian for sport and
physical education, not necessarily knowing what I
wanted to do. I originally thought I would
want to go to Med school or maybe become a physiotherapist
because that's what I knew more about.
(05:34):
But then during that degree I had to complete an internship as
a requirement to pass. And that's when I came across
the owner of Active Therapy PlusKim was looking for some
students to have for internshipsto help out.
And I was like, well, I don't really know what athletic
therapy is, but I'll give this ashot.
(05:56):
It sounds interesting and I liked it so much.
I kind of changed directions of what I wanted to do with my
career and that's when I went toSheridan College after I
graduated from luncheon and did the four year athletic therapy
program there. Nice, how did you like going to
that college? I liked it.
(06:18):
The professors were really good.I learned a lot.
It was very busy between classesand we have a lot of in person
like hands on internships or practicals where we work with
sports teams and clinics throughout the communities.
So balancing that on top of classes, even though it was
(06:41):
great hands on learning, sometimes it was quite chaotic
and crazy, but in the end it definitely allowed me to get the
hands on experience that I needed to go into the workforce
when I graduated. So by the looks of it here on
your website, you're doing work with the Sudbury Lady Wolves
(07:03):
team. Yes.
So the last previous two seasonsI worked with the U15 AA Lady
Wolves team basically providing coverage for their games,
whether home or away. They would usually do a few
tournaments every year. That was a really great
(07:25):
experience because most most youth hockey teams just employ
parent trainers for their medical staff.
So to get a team that was willing to actually bring a
certified medical professional on board was kind of a big
(07:49):
switch, especially within stud breaks, it's not seen very
often. So when you were like a little
kid, were you, did you know you were going to, Oh, you said you
didn't know you were going to bedoing this, right?
Yeah, I wanted to always be likesomething within sports I like,
(08:09):
like I grew up playing hockey and basketball and really just
trying a bunch of different sports.
But I was never really skilled enough to make it to any sort of
higher level playing wise. So I would knew I wanted to stay
within the sports realm, whetherit was coaching or medical wise.
(08:31):
I just never quite sure was surehow I would make that happen
until I discovered what athletictherapy was.
And are you working with the Sudbury Spartans football team?
I am, yeah. So I am their head athletic
therapist for all their teams. I've been doing that.
(08:52):
I started that in the summer of 2022.
I first moved here and the owner, Cam, was looking for
someone to cover those teams. And I wasn't really sure what it
was all about, but I said I would.
And ever since each season the organization keeps growing and
(09:12):
adding more teams. So I'm always busy with them and
honestly football is probably one of my favorite sports to
cover so I thoroughly enjoy it. Are you mean do you mean there's
more than one Spartans team? Yeah.
So when I started back in 2022, all they had was the men's team,
(09:32):
so the adult men's team and AU16boys team.
Since then though, this past summer we had those two teams
plus AU18 boys team, AU 16 girlstackle team and A19U girls
tackle team. Wow.
(09:52):
So we've now added girls tackle football to our program here in
Sudbury. Dude I always thought that the
Spartans were like the Spartans,the one team.
Yeah. And it was like that for a long
time. And then they eventually started
adding the youth programs withinit and it's grown a lot.
(10:15):
Wow. So if we go to a Spartans game,
we're going to see you like, behind the bench.
Yeah, you'll see me on the sideline of the bench.
You'll probably see me running around like a chicken with my
head cut off some days because there's always something going
on. But yeah, I'll be on the
sideline. And then like I said earlier, if
someone goes down getting injured, I'm the first one to
(10:37):
run out onto the field to make sure they're OK.
And yeah, just basically make sure everything runs smoothly on
the sideline. Usually for the Spartans team,
sometimes I have to help out with the away team.
It just depends on who's coming and who, if the team has someone
(10:58):
travelling with them. So it changes often week to
week. So the Spartans are playing what
and like other cities? Yes.
So they usually have a mix of home and away games, not always
even home versus away, but there's specific teams within
(11:20):
each team. The youth, junior boys and the
junior girls and the men's team all play in three separate
leagues, so the scheduling sometimes gets a little chaotic.
I'm in charge of making sure allgames are covered, whether home
or away, and that I have enough staff to make sure all games
have the proper coverage. But yeah, it's rare that they
(11:44):
would never all be at home at the same time.
So there's more athletic therapists helping out with this
job, right? Yeah, so this past summer I had
another certified athletic therapist helping me, and then I
had two students as well helpingme.
(12:04):
And you're covering the away games too.
Yeah. So if we're at Sudbury's playing
down in Toronto, say if I have astaff here that can go, we'll
travel on the team bus with them.
That's ideal. But if there's been a few times
where there's too many games happening, So if that's the
case, then I'll make sure to reach out to some other athletic
(12:26):
therapist that I know in the area we're traveling to and have
someone from, say, local to thatarea cover our team for that
game. That's really cool that you hop
on the bus, Gus, and go with theteam to Yeah.
So football being like a pretty physical sport, I would imagine.
(12:48):
Like do you see injuries on a steady basis, more or less or?
Yeah, it's pretty rare to go through an entire game without
at least one injury. That's the unfortunate side of
football. But most of the time it's not
anything super serious. I've had to call ambulances a
(13:11):
few times, but that's definitelynot the norm for every single
game. But you'd never know what you're
going to walk into when you go to a football game.
It can either be super chill andeasiest game you've ever
covered, or it can go downhill very quickly.
Do you ever see like, tensions between specific teams?
(13:34):
Like these two teams don't like each other more than others kind
of thing. Sometimes, yeah, there's a often
I'll hear coaches or players talk about that stuff.
I try to remain neutral to that sort of thing as a medical
professional, especially if I dohave to provide help to that
(13:54):
other team. I got to make sure that everyone
gets the same treatment and thateverything is fair that way.
But you definitely see some rivalry and competition and some
things get heated. There's some northern Ontario
rivalries that happen, but I feel like that common in pretty
(14:16):
much every sport. Yeah, cool.
It's really neat. Like it's, this is something
that I was largely unaware of asa career or profession.
So it's good to be educated on it for sure.
So there's a photo of you here on your Instagram with like, I
(14:36):
don't know if it's a tool belt, but it looks like he got some
tools sticking out of your belt.Like what?
What kind of tools are you working with for this job?
So that, so that, so that's my little personal kid.
A lot of people, we call it our Fanny packs because they do look
like little Fanny packs, but youcan get them in different sizes,
(14:58):
shapes. Every athletic therapist kind of
differs a bit in terms of what they specifically put in their
kit. For me personally, I keep things
that would be required in the emergency situation, like my
blood pressure cuff and my stethoscope and my little thing.
(15:18):
It's called a pulse oximeter. So you put that.
It's the things you sometimes see get put on the tips to your
fingers that tell you, like the percentage of oxygen that the
person is breathing, as well as like their heart rate.
So I always have that in my Fanny pack no matter what.
And then basic things like band aids, gauze, dairy strips, so if
(15:41):
someone starts bleeding and I need to wrap them up quickly,
it's already right on me and I can easily grab it.
I'll keep things like scissors. So if I have to cut anything or
something, we call the tape shark, but it's basically like a
cutter tool that you can stick between the tape and your skin.
(16:02):
So if your ankles taped, you kind of just put it in there and
you push against it and it has ablade where it cuts the tape,
but it's kind of concealed so you don't cut yourself with the
blade. It's really hard to explain
without actually showing you what it looks like, but anyone
who's had their ankle taped probably knows exactly what I'm
talking about. So I'll always have that on me.
(16:26):
And then the rest of the stuff Ihave in my kid is very much
dependent on what sport I'm covering.
So say if I'm covering hockey, for example, there's always risk
with the skate blades that someone could cut a major artery
in their thigh. So I'll keep a tourniquet in my
(16:47):
Fanny pack. So if I have to run out onto the
ice and that's the case, I can quickly put that on to stop the
bleed. But that's not necessarily
something I would keep in my kitwhen I'm covering football
because that's not really a big risk in football.
Wow, yeah. It varies based on person and
what sport you're covering and like what level of sport you're
(17:08):
covering, but every AT you ask would probably say something a
little different. So you're like the first line of
of defence or the the first on the scene, you're on the scene
for the game. That's, that's really good to
have. And I was, I was unaware of it,
like I said earlier. And so you can technically join
(17:31):
like climb and and go to other cities and like, I'd imagine
there's a high demand for this job.
Yes and no. So if you watch like high level
sports, they'll always have a TSthere as well as higher level
will have often have like a doctor on site, a sports Med
(17:52):
doc. But that's not something we
really see in Sudbury's per SE. Usually in Sudbury it's I would
be the first person there in thehighest trained unless I call
paramedics to come. But saying bigger events they
would have usually higher trained staff.
But there's still a lot of sporting organizations,
(18:15):
especially minor sports, are with kids that rely on either
parent volunteers that have somesort of medical training or
parent volunteers that take the bare minimum first aid training.
And then they put them on a bench and hope that nothing
serious happens, which is still very unfortunate.
(18:39):
But hopefully by getting the word out about athletic therapy
and the importance of having someone trained on your
sideline, that will slowly continue to change.
And it has been changing over the years.
So you must really love the gametoo.
Like the sports? Yeah, I will admit it's taken me
(19:02):
a long time to figure out the rules of summer sports like
especially football, because I never played football growing
up. So in the last Four Seasons I've
been working it. It's been slow, but I am getting
better. But then sports like hockey,
where I've played it, I get really into it and sometimes I
cheer a little too loudly. Nice.
(19:27):
So what's this cupping therapy? I've actually done this before
with the therapist. But tell us about cupping
therapy. So cupping therapy is a type of
modality that can practice for thousands of years in
(19:48):
traditional Chinese medicine. But then more recently in modern
times, it's been brought back popular.
A lot of people started talking about again when they saw
Michael Phelps at the Olympics and you could see all those
circle marks down his back. You're like, what is that?
And they kind of picked up a little more from them, but it's
(20:08):
basically cops. They could be made from glass,
the ones I have, or more silicone type.
Summer plastic and they basically just create suction on
the skin through either a pump or the silicone one.
Usually you can just press on itand they attach.
(20:30):
You can adjust how much suction there is on the skin and
basically it brings blood flow to the surface and I find it
really helps reducing a lot of muscle tightness and pain
relief, especially if you have the person doing movements or
(20:50):
stretches with the cups on. You can do it like that or you
can apply the cups stationary and they'll still be beneficial.
They improve circulation, so because you're bringing the
blood flow to the area, some people find it promotes
relaxation. I think that's dependent on how
(21:14):
much suction you put in the cupsbecause if you're putting a lot
of suction, it's not always the most comfortable.
And then there's other types of cupping that I don't practice,
like fire cupping, where they actually set the cup on fire
briefly before they put it on the skin.
(21:35):
That's not within my scope of practice.
I will never do that. And then there's somewhere, they
call it wet cupping, where they poked bunch of tiny little holes
in the skin to make it bleed, and then they apply suction to
bring that extra blood flow. But again, I can't Pierce the
skin in any way that's not within my scope of practice.
(21:57):
So that's another one that I can't do, but it is an option,
especially with traditional Chinese medicine practitioners.
How how important do you think pregame stretching and warm up
is in terms of less injuries? Very important.
(22:22):
You need to get the blood flowing.
You need to get the muscles loose and warm before you do any
sort of high intensity activity.Now, doing the right warm up is
very important. That's probably the most
important part. You need to make sure you're
activating and warming up the correct muscle groups for your
(22:44):
sport and that you're doing the stretches properly.
I often see some athletes will go through kind of the motions
of the stretches, but they're not fully getting into the
stretch. And then later they'll end up
pulling their hamstring and wonder why it's like while you
didn't properly stretch that muscle.
(23:09):
And yeah, it's a lot of people don't realize what how important
the warm up is to their performance.
Not just for the muscle warm up and the stretching, but also the
mental aspect of the sport. Because a lot of warm up, you go
through a lot of the movements and the skills that you need to
(23:35):
be able to perform during your game or your practice.
So by doing some of those movements in the warm up, you're
preparing yourself mentally to be able to do those at a higher
level during your game. The next question is going to be
also the final question and thisis what I call the daily
(23:55):
segment, Cassie, and you probably heard it, It's the same
question that I ask every guest.And the question is, what is one
thing that you feel would make Sudbury greater?
One thing that makes Sudbury greater is I mean in front the
(24:17):
sports aspect would be making sure that every single sports
team, league, high school, elementary school in this city
has someone properly trained to cover all of their sporting
events. We've seen it time and time
again in professional sports as well as amateur sports.
(24:37):
If something serious happens like a cardiac arrest, having
someone there who is trained to deal with that significantly
increases the chances of that person surviving and making a
full recovery. So if there's one thing that I
want people to take away from this is realizing the importance
(24:57):
of athletic therapists and medical professionals and
providing a safe environment fortheir athletes and their
children. Sounds good to me.
Sudbury sports the top level in Ontario if they were able to
have all their events covered bymedical professionals.
(25:22):
So how would how would we like hire you?
How would somebody go about securing your services?
They can go about that a few different ways.
They could send me an e-mail. I don't know if there's a way to
get that posted my e-mail. They can call the clinic I work
(25:43):
out of that active Therapy Plus and ask to speak to me that way.
I'm very active on social media,so I have my Instagram account,
Cassie dot AT People are more than welcome to message me
through there. If you're looking to book an
employment treatment in the clinic with me, I also have the
(26:04):
link in my bio on my Instagram that you can go on and you can
see my availability and actuallybook appointments that way.
If that's easier for you rather than calling, there's a bunch of
different ways you can reach outto me.
What was the clinic thing you mentioned?
You can call the clinic at Active Therapy Plus.
(26:27):
Right. OK, cool.
Sudbury interviews everyone. That's our episode for today.
I believe it's episode 37. And we were speaking with Cassie
Friend, who's a certified athletic therapist.
Thanks for coming on the show today.
Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.
Anything. Any last words before?
(26:50):
No, I don't think so. Just if you would like to reach
out, feel free. I'm always open to chatting and
giving more information. Great.
Well, thank you again. Take care.
Thank you. You too.
Bye bye.
Hi everyone, welcome to Sudbury interviews.
Today we have Cassie friend she's a certified athletic
therapist working with active therapy plus on Lawrence St. and
we'll be discussing her career today.
Before we begin, you can find uson Sudstown and join the
conversation. If you would like to be a guest
(00:20):
on the show, please reach out. Hey, Cassie, how you doing?
I'm. Great.
How are you? Great.
Thanks for coming on the show today.
I'm really excited to be here. So what does a certified
athletic therapist do? So the best way to describe it
(00:40):
is I like to say that if at least for me personally, I treat
very similar to a physiotherapist.
So I do a lot of clinical work. So I do a lot of hands on soft
tissue work, muscle release, a lot of exercise prescription.
That's a big thing, working on strength and mobility as well as
(01:04):
different types of modality machines just to help people of
any athletic ability or career or age get back to any sort of
activities that they like. The one main thing that sets us
apart from say, other health professionals like
physiotherapists and chiropractors and all that is
(01:27):
you will often see us on sidelines of sporting events.
So I work a lot with local and provincial sports teams,
providing emergency care and injury prevention techniques and
first aid to multiple different levels of sports.
(01:50):
Great. Are you seeing?
So when people get hurt at sports games, you're there to to
support them. Yes, so say someone goes down in
a football game on the field, I would be the first one to run
out to make sure that a what they're dealing with isn't a
(02:13):
life threatening emergency. So if that's the case, then I
make the proper calls and I handle it until someone more
qualified like a paramedic wouldarise.
But if it's something more like you rolled your ankle and now
it's sprained, OK, well, let's safely get you off the field to
the side. Let's assess if it's if I think
(02:36):
it's broken or if it's just a sprain.
And then some things to just make the pain manageable.
See if it's safe for them to return to the game or if further
follow up is necessary, like say, going to the hospital for
X-rays. So when you're, when you're
going to school, you're, they'retraining you on how to identify
(03:01):
these like these wound wounds orwhatever.
Yeah. So this program, in order to
become an athletic therapist, most programs are four years in
length and we go into quite a bit of detail in terms of the
entire musculoskeletal system. So all the muscles, bones,
(03:22):
joints, all of that, as well as a lot of different emergency
procedures. So actually in order to be a
certified athletic therapist, you also need to be a certified
first responder within Red Cross.
So we are updating those skills,some of them yearly and some of
them every three years to make sure we're always prepared for
(03:45):
emergency situations like that. Great.
So this is this is a neat littlequestion here because I honestly
don't know the answer to this, but what what's a concussion in
a general sense? Like what is that when that
happens to someone? So a concussion really is a type
(04:06):
of mild traumatic brain injury. So what a lot of people don't
realize is concussions can actually happen without you
directly hitting your head. So it could be a jolt where you
fall or anything that really causes your brain to move within
(04:29):
your skull and cause changes in with how your brain works.
They're really technically invisible, like you can't see
them on say ACT scan. So some people think, oh, you
can't see them, they're not thatserious.
Well, no, they are. They can be very serious and
(04:50):
there's lots of different symptoms and severity and really
everyone's different when it comes to what a concussion looks
like for them and how it affectsthem.
It's great. Yeah, that makes sense to me for
sure. So you did your schooling at
(05:12):
Laurentian, right? I did my first degree at
Laurentian, so I went to Laurentian for sport and
physical education, not necessarily knowing what I
wanted to do. I originally thought I would
want to go to Med school or maybe become a physiotherapist
because that's what I knew more about.
(05:34):
But then during that degree I had to complete an internship as
a requirement to pass. And that's when I came across
the owner of Active Therapy PlusKim was looking for some
students to have for internshipsto help out.
And I was like, well, I don't really know what athletic
therapy is, but I'll give this ashot.
(05:56):
It sounds interesting and I liked it so much.
I kind of changed directions of what I wanted to do with my
career and that's when I went toSheridan College after I
graduated from luncheon and did the four year athletic therapy
program there. Nice, how did you like going to
that college? I liked it.
(06:18):
The professors were really good.I learned a lot.
It was very busy between classesand we have a lot of in person
like hands on internships or practicals where we work with
sports teams and clinics throughout the communities.
So balancing that on top of classes, even though it was
(06:41):
great hands on learning, sometimes it was quite chaotic
and crazy, but in the end it definitely allowed me to get the
hands on experience that I needed to go into the workforce
when I graduated. So by the looks of it here on
your website, you're doing work with the Sudbury Lady Wolves
(07:03):
team. Yes.
So the last previous two seasonsI worked with the U15 AA Lady
Wolves team basically providing coverage for their games,
whether home or away. They would usually do a few
tournaments every year. That was a really great
(07:25):
experience because most most youth hockey teams just employ
parent trainers for their medical staff.
So to get a team that was willing to actually bring a
certified medical professional on board was kind of a big
(07:49):
switch, especially within stud breaks, it's not seen very
often. So when you were like a little
kid, were you, did you know you were going to, Oh, you said you
didn't know you were going to bedoing this, right?
Yeah, I wanted to always be likesomething within sports I like,
(08:09):
like I grew up playing hockey and basketball and really just
trying a bunch of different sports.
But I was never really skilled enough to make it to any sort of
higher level playing wise. So I would knew I wanted to stay
within the sports realm, whetherit was coaching or medical wise.
(08:31):
I just never quite sure was surehow I would make that happen
until I discovered what athletictherapy was.
And are you working with the Sudbury Spartans football team?
I am, yeah. So I am their head athletic
therapist for all their teams. I've been doing that.
(08:52):
I started that in the summer of 2022.
I first moved here and the owner, Cam, was looking for
someone to cover those teams. And I wasn't really sure what it
was all about, but I said I would.
And ever since each season the organization keeps growing and
(09:12):
adding more teams. So I'm always busy with them and
honestly football is probably one of my favorite sports to
cover so I thoroughly enjoy it. Are you mean do you mean there's
more than one Spartans team? Yeah.
So when I started back in 2022, all they had was the men's team,
(09:32):
so the adult men's team and AU16boys team.
Since then though, this past summer we had those two teams
plus AU18 boys team, AU 16 girlstackle team and A19U girls
tackle team. Wow.
(09:52):
So we've now added girls tackle football to our program here in
Sudbury. Dude I always thought that the
Spartans were like the Spartans,the one team.
Yeah. And it was like that for a long
time. And then they eventually started
adding the youth programs withinit and it's grown a lot.
(10:15):
Wow. So if we go to a Spartans game,
we're going to see you like, behind the bench.
Yeah, you'll see me on the sideline of the bench.
You'll probably see me running around like a chicken with my
head cut off some days because there's always something going
on. But yeah, I'll be on the
sideline. And then like I said earlier, if
someone goes down getting injured, I'm the first one to
(10:37):
run out onto the field to make sure they're OK.
And yeah, just basically make sure everything runs smoothly on
the sideline. Usually for the Spartans team,
sometimes I have to help out with the away team.
It just depends on who's coming and who, if the team has someone
(10:58):
travelling with them. So it changes often week to
week. So the Spartans are playing what
and like other cities? Yes.
So they usually have a mix of home and away games, not always
even home versus away, but there's specific teams within
(11:20):
each team. The youth, junior boys and the
junior girls and the men's team all play in three separate
leagues, so the scheduling sometimes gets a little chaotic.
I'm in charge of making sure allgames are covered, whether home
or away, and that I have enough staff to make sure all games
have the proper coverage. But yeah, it's rare that they
(11:44):
would never all be at home at the same time.
So there's more athletic therapists helping out with this
job, right? Yeah, so this past summer I had
another certified athletic therapist helping me, and then I
had two students as well helpingme.
(12:04):
And you're covering the away games too.
Yeah. So if we're at Sudbury's playing
down in Toronto, say if I have astaff here that can go, we'll
travel on the team bus with them.
That's ideal. But if there's been a few times
where there's too many games happening, So if that's the
case, then I'll make sure to reach out to some other athletic
(12:26):
therapist that I know in the area we're traveling to and have
someone from, say, local to thatarea cover our team for that
game. That's really cool that you hop
on the bus, Gus, and go with theteam to Yeah.
So football being like a pretty physical sport, I would imagine.
(12:48):
Like do you see injuries on a steady basis, more or less or?
Yeah, it's pretty rare to go through an entire game without
at least one injury. That's the unfortunate side of
football. But most of the time it's not
anything super serious. I've had to call ambulances a
(13:11):
few times, but that's definitelynot the norm for every single
game. But you'd never know what you're
going to walk into when you go to a football game.
It can either be super chill andeasiest game you've ever
covered, or it can go downhill very quickly.
Do you ever see like, tensions between specific teams?
(13:34):
Like these two teams don't like each other more than others kind
of thing. Sometimes, yeah, there's a often
I'll hear coaches or players talk about that stuff.
I try to remain neutral to that sort of thing as a medical
professional, especially if I dohave to provide help to that
(13:54):
other team. I got to make sure that everyone
gets the same treatment and thateverything is fair that way.
But you definitely see some rivalry and competition and some
things get heated. There's some northern Ontario
rivalries that happen, but I feel like that common in pretty
(14:16):
much every sport. Yeah, cool.
It's really neat. Like it's, this is something
that I was largely unaware of asa career or profession.
So it's good to be educated on it for sure.
So there's a photo of you here on your Instagram with like, I
(14:36):
don't know if it's a tool belt, but it looks like he got some
tools sticking out of your belt.Like what?
What kind of tools are you working with for this job?
So that, so that, so that's my little personal kid.
A lot of people, we call it our Fanny packs because they do look
like little Fanny packs, but youcan get them in different sizes,
(14:58):
shapes. Every athletic therapist kind of
differs a bit in terms of what they specifically put in their
kit. For me personally, I keep things
that would be required in the emergency situation, like my
blood pressure cuff and my stethoscope and my little thing.
(15:18):
It's called a pulse oximeter. So you put that.
It's the things you sometimes see get put on the tips to your
fingers that tell you, like the percentage of oxygen that the
person is breathing, as well as like their heart rate.
So I always have that in my Fanny pack no matter what.
And then basic things like band aids, gauze, dairy strips, so if
(15:41):
someone starts bleeding and I need to wrap them up quickly,
it's already right on me and I can easily grab it.
I'll keep things like scissors. So if I have to cut anything or
something, we call the tape shark, but it's basically like a
cutter tool that you can stick between the tape and your skin.
(16:02):
So if your ankles taped, you kind of just put it in there and
you push against it and it has ablade where it cuts the tape,
but it's kind of concealed so you don't cut yourself with the
blade. It's really hard to explain
without actually showing you what it looks like, but anyone
who's had their ankle taped probably knows exactly what I'm
talking about. So I'll always have that on me.
(16:26):
And then the rest of the stuff Ihave in my kid is very much
dependent on what sport I'm covering.
So say if I'm covering hockey, for example, there's always risk
with the skate blades that someone could cut a major artery
in their thigh. So I'll keep a tourniquet in my
(16:47):
Fanny pack. So if I have to run out onto the
ice and that's the case, I can quickly put that on to stop the
bleed. But that's not necessarily
something I would keep in my kitwhen I'm covering football
because that's not really a big risk in football.
Wow, yeah. It varies based on person and
what sport you're covering and like what level of sport you're
(17:08):
covering, but every AT you ask would probably say something a
little different. So you're like the first line of
of defence or the the first on the scene, you're on the scene
for the game. That's, that's really good to
have. And I was, I was unaware of it,
like I said earlier. And so you can technically join
(17:31):
like climb and and go to other cities and like, I'd imagine
there's a high demand for this job.
Yes and no. So if you watch like high level
sports, they'll always have a TSthere as well as higher level
will have often have like a doctor on site, a sports Med
(17:52):
doc. But that's not something we
really see in Sudbury's per SE. Usually in Sudbury it's I would
be the first person there in thehighest trained unless I call
paramedics to come. But saying bigger events they
would have usually higher trained staff.
But there's still a lot of sporting organizations,
(18:15):
especially minor sports, are with kids that rely on either
parent volunteers that have somesort of medical training or
parent volunteers that take the bare minimum first aid training.
And then they put them on a bench and hope that nothing
serious happens, which is still very unfortunate.
(18:39):
But hopefully by getting the word out about athletic therapy
and the importance of having someone trained on your
sideline, that will slowly continue to change.
And it has been changing over the years.
So you must really love the gametoo.
Like the sports? Yeah, I will admit it's taken me
(19:02):
a long time to figure out the rules of summer sports like
especially football, because I never played football growing
up. So in the last Four Seasons I've
been working it. It's been slow, but I am getting
better. But then sports like hockey,
where I've played it, I get really into it and sometimes I
cheer a little too loudly. Nice.
(19:27):
So what's this cupping therapy? I've actually done this before
with the therapist. But tell us about cupping
therapy. So cupping therapy is a type of
modality that can practice for thousands of years in
(19:48):
traditional Chinese medicine. But then more recently in modern
times, it's been brought back popular.
A lot of people started talking about again when they saw
Michael Phelps at the Olympics and you could see all those
circle marks down his back. You're like, what is that?
And they kind of picked up a little more from them, but it's
(20:08):
basically cops. They could be made from glass,
the ones I have, or more silicone type.
Summer plastic and they basically just create suction on
the skin through either a pump or the silicone one.
Usually you can just press on itand they attach.
(20:30):
You can adjust how much suction there is on the skin and
basically it brings blood flow to the surface and I find it
really helps reducing a lot of muscle tightness and pain
relief, especially if you have the person doing movements or
(20:50):
stretches with the cups on. You can do it like that or you
can apply the cups stationary and they'll still be beneficial.
They improve circulation, so because you're bringing the
blood flow to the area, some people find it promotes
relaxation. I think that's dependent on how
(21:14):
much suction you put in the cupsbecause if you're putting a lot
of suction, it's not always the most comfortable.
And then there's other types of cupping that I don't practice,
like fire cupping, where they actually set the cup on fire
briefly before they put it on the skin.
(21:35):
That's not within my scope of practice.
I will never do that. And then there's somewhere, they
call it wet cupping, where they poked bunch of tiny little holes
in the skin to make it bleed, and then they apply suction to
bring that extra blood flow. But again, I can't Pierce the
skin in any way that's not within my scope of practice.
(21:57):
So that's another one that I can't do, but it is an option,
especially with traditional Chinese medicine practitioners.
How how important do you think pregame stretching and warm up
is in terms of less injuries? Very important.
(22:22):
You need to get the blood flowing.
You need to get the muscles loose and warm before you do any
sort of high intensity activity.Now, doing the right warm up is
very important. That's probably the most
important part. You need to make sure you're
activating and warming up the correct muscle groups for your
(22:44):
sport and that you're doing the stretches properly.
I often see some athletes will go through kind of the motions
of the stretches, but they're not fully getting into the
stretch. And then later they'll end up
pulling their hamstring and wonder why it's like while you
didn't properly stretch that muscle.
(23:09):
And yeah, it's a lot of people don't realize what how important
the warm up is to their performance.
Not just for the muscle warm up and the stretching, but also the
mental aspect of the sport. Because a lot of warm up, you go
through a lot of the movements and the skills that you need to
(23:35):
be able to perform during your game or your practice.
So by doing some of those movements in the warm up, you're
preparing yourself mentally to be able to do those at a higher
level during your game. The next question is going to be
also the final question and thisis what I call the daily
(23:55):
segment, Cassie, and you probably heard it, It's the same
question that I ask every guest.And the question is, what is one
thing that you feel would make Sudbury greater?
One thing that makes Sudbury greater is I mean in front the
(24:17):
sports aspect would be making sure that every single sports
team, league, high school, elementary school in this city
has someone properly trained to cover all of their sporting
events. We've seen it time and time
again in professional sports as well as amateur sports.
(24:37):
If something serious happens like a cardiac arrest, having
someone there who is trained to deal with that significantly
increases the chances of that person surviving and making a
full recovery. So if there's one thing that I
want people to take away from this is realizing the importance
(24:57):
of athletic therapists and medical professionals and
providing a safe environment fortheir athletes and their
children. Sounds good to me.
Sudbury sports the top level in Ontario if they were able to
have all their events covered bymedical professionals.
(25:22):
So how would how would we like hire you?
How would somebody go about securing your services?
They can go about that a few different ways.
They could send me an e-mail. I don't know if there's a way to
get that posted my e-mail. They can call the clinic I work
(25:43):
out of that active Therapy Plus and ask to speak to me that way.
I'm very active on social media,so I have my Instagram account,
Cassie dot AT People are more than welcome to message me
through there. If you're looking to book an
employment treatment in the clinic with me, I also have the
(26:04):
link in my bio on my Instagram that you can go on and you can
see my availability and actuallybook appointments that way.
If that's easier for you rather than calling, there's a bunch of
different ways you can reach outto me.
What was the clinic thing you mentioned?
You can call the clinic at Active Therapy Plus.
(26:27):
Right. OK, cool.
Sudbury interviews everyone. That's our episode for today.
I believe it's episode 37. And we were speaking with Cassie
Friend, who's a certified athletic therapist.
Thanks for coming on the show today.
Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.
Anything. Any last words before?
(26:50):
No, I don't think so. Just if you would like to reach
out, feel free. I'm always open to chatting and
giving more information. Great.
Well, thank you again. Take care.
Thank you. You too.
Bye bye.
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