Meet the Mason Nation: Rebekah Schmidt

Rebekah Schmidt

Job: Head Athletic Trainer, Intercollegiate Athletics 

There’s a hush that often falls over a sports crowd when gameplay stops and a lone figure runs out to tend to a fallen player. No matter the injury, George Mason University’s student-athletes are in good hands with Rebekah Schmidt. She leads a team of 10 athletic trainers for George Mason’s 22 total Intercollegiate Athletics sports teams and is the trainer for the men’s basketball team. The position entails much more than ensuring players can play a good game. “We are their primary contact for all of their health needs while they’re here at George Mason.” 

Bad Encounter Gone Good: When most people talk about an experience that influenced their professional path, it’s usually a positive one—but Schmidt’s story is different. After sustaining an injury as a high school soccer player, she went to her school’s athletic trainer for help.  “He told me that I was just being a weak girl, that I was fine, and to ‘suck it up.’” Five hip surgeries later, she realized how wrong that trainer was. “I’ve since had many great athletic trainers in my life, but that one really made me want to be a better professional.” 

Behind the Scenes: Schmidt works closely with George Mason's strength and conditioning and sports performance staff to develop intensive and customized treatments for each individual men’s basketball player, including adjusting their weights during workouts, prescribing extra stretching, taping joints, and so much more. During practices, Schmidt said, “I’m monitoring, looking at their mechanics—is someone limping when they weren’t yesterday? Is someone holding a knee who wasn’t before?” The work continues with post-treatments after practice and extensive documentation. “We want to make sure that we're showing progression, which is critical in any medical profession.”  

Changing Times: While the game has very much stayed the same, treatment technologies have advanced in ways that allow Schmidt to do even more. She mentions wearable devices that measure “the physical load of a practice, how long they’re running, how much intensity…all of that cumulative stress on the body is the load.” George Mason is also one of the few universities to have Catapult ClearSky, an athlete tracking system that captures multiple data points. Schmidt and the strength and conditioning team then use that information to collaboratively create personalized treatment and workout plans for each player. “Having them overcoming injury and seeing them on the court for the first time…shooting the shot that they weren't able to do a couple months ago—that's just so rewarding because it's seeing all that hard work that we did together come to a great resolution.” 

A Different Kind of Club: Collegiate athletics can be a male-dominated career field, but Schmidt saw that George Mason was different. "You don't always see females in leadership roles--but George Mason had that." She cites former Deputy Athletic Director Debi Corbatto, BS Marketing '86, MS Exercise Science, Fitness, and Health Promotion '03, PhD Education '18, a George Mason alumna who served as an athletic trainer during the Patriots’ legendary Final Four run, as a pioneer and mentor, as well as Linda Pullen, George Mason’s director of sports medicine. “The best thing about working here at George Mason is the community, the relationships, being able to see and help develop student-athletes.” Now in her 13th year at George Mason, Schmidt serves as a mentor herself, specifically for students in the College of Education and Human Development’s athletic training master’s program. 

Advice for the Rest of Us: Not everyone can play at an elite level, but Schmidt has some universal advice: “Number one thing is making sure that you’re doing some kind of weight training…kind of loading the muscles at some point to make sure you’re preventing injuries.” And for younger athletes, she encourages a bit of diversification. “The best athletes that really develop are ones that do a multitude of sports [and] learn different ways to move their body.”