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Former Texas A&M trainer claims he was forced to rush injured players back
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While it’s commonly believed that many injured players are rushed back before returning to full health, it’s not common for someone within the organization to admit it.
However, former Texas A&M athletic trainer Karl Kapchinski did just that in an interview on HBO’s “Real Sports.”
Kapchinski, the 2005 Division I College Athletic Trainer of the Year, worked for the Aggies for 31 years before being fired by former athletic director Eric Hyman in 2013.
He told HBO’s Jon Frankel that during his time with the school, coaches pushed him to clear athletes to play before they were 100 percent recovered from their setbacks, according to The Austin American Statesman’s Suzanne Halliburton.
In part of the interview, Frankel asks Kapchinski, “If you said to a coach, ‘Coach, I know we said it was gonna be four weeks, but we need an extra week.’ What would the coach say to you?”
Kapchinski responded by saying, “You would be challenged on your character, your credentials. You know, maybe you were the wrong guy for the job.”
According to Halliburton, Kapchinski filed a lawsuit with Texas A&M claiming that he was fired because of his age and not because of “unacceptable job performance” as Hyman wrote.
You can read the story in its entirety here, which includes the interview with Kapchinski.
Born and raised in Gainesville, Talal joined SDS in 2015 after spending 2 years in Bristol as an ESPN researcher. Previously, Talal worked at The Gainesville Sun.
