Northwood students take their athletics very seriously, which includes the crucial aspect of recovery. Luckily for us, there has been a new addition to our athletic training resources this year: the recovery room. An extension of the existing training room, the new recovery room has become a popular spot for students to hang out and boost their recovery.
Boys’ Varsity players use the Normatecs in the recovery room during their free time. Photo by Mr. Donatello.
Andrew “Donny” Donatello, Northwood’s athletic trainer, has seen highly increased traffic in his spaces since the introduction of the recovery room. He says, “I’ll have anywhere from 10 kids to 20 kids a day. I’ve had a day where I had 42 kids use the Normatecs. 42 in one day.” He spoke about the training area’s evolution over the last few years; the training and recovery rooms are in the original training area before COVID, during which the training office was remodeled as a quarantine space. The training rooms moved to a temporary location, and when Donny realized that the old training rooms were now vacant post-COVID, he asked to have his office moved back to its original location. With that move came the addition of the recovery room, and there is extensive equipment that many students use there. Donny says, “One of the most popular [recovery equipment] is the Normatec. Another way to recover is with foam rollers. Massage—we have multiple different types of massage guns. We do manual therapy here, as well as all other traditional therapy and therapeutic stuff.”
While recovering, students also build a small community in the recovery room with Donny’s facilitation. He says, “I think that it’s really providing a safe place for kids to come and hang out; one thing I do when kids come in is I always introduce them to the other kids if they don’t already know each other. They also get benefits from learning why to recover, how to recover, what the benefits of recovery are, and what works for them. They’re learning about themselves as well.”
