Best in Ohio in Athletic Training Competition

Students from Cedarville University’s athletic training program won the Ohio Athletic Trainers’ Association (OATA) Annual Student Quiz Bowl on November 13 with 4,278.12 points. The Cedarville team defeated teams from Ohio State University (OSU) and Ohio University (OU) by more than 2,000 points in the final round.

With their victory, Cedarville’s quiz bowl team will represent Ohio from March 9-12, 2022, at the Great Lakes Athletic Trainers Association (GLATA) district competition, held in Wheeling, Illinois. The competition will include state winners from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The winner of that competition will advance to the National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA) quiz bowl in June.

Cedarville has sent students to the OATA competition for approximately 25 years, winning the 2019 and 2021 competitions. This will be Cedarville’s first time at the GLATA competition — they were unable to attend in March 2020 due to COVID-19.

Cedarville’s quiz bowl team included three seniors in the Bachelor of Arts in athletic training program: Claire Barker of Hopkinton, Massachusetts; Jacob Curran of Westfield, Massachusetts; and Kaitlyn Tyms of Jonesborough, Tennessee. Anna Callihan of Greenup, Kentucky, served as an alternate.

The competition was held as part of OATA’s student symposium at Ohio University’s Dublin Extension Campus in Dublin, Ohio. Students attended two lectures and participated in the quiz bowl, in which students responded to prompts on a Jeopardy-style game board from their phones.

Nine schools participated in the first round — Cedarville, OSU, OU, Ashland University, Bowling Green State University, Kent State University, Marietta College, Otterbein University, and Wilmington College. Categories included pharmacology, upper body, cranial nerves, general medicine, organization and administration, sudden death, and emergency care.

“We compete against much larger universities that might have more name recognition than Cedarville,” Tyms said. “It definitely speaks to how strong our program is and how well our classes and professors prepare us.”

“These team members are great ambassadors of the profession and also of their Christian faith, and it’s nice to see them perform at that level,” added Dr. Ken Blood, associate professor of athletic training in the school of allied health. “People know that our students are students of faith as well as outstanding professionals and outstanding clinicians.”

Cedarville and Ohio State were the only schools that sent senior undergraduate students to OATA, with the other seven schools all sending first-year professional students. That won’t be the case next year, as Cedarville will be replacing its Bachelor of Arts in athletic training program with an acceleratedBachelor of Science in sport medicine + Master of Athletic Training program this summer.

Located in southwest Ohio, Cedarville University is an accredited, Christ-centered, Baptist institution with an enrollment of 4,550 undergraduate, graduate and online students in more than 150 areas of study. Founded in 1887, Cedarville is one of the largest private universities in Ohio, recognized nationally for its authentic Christian community, rigorous academic programs, including the Master of Athletic Training and Bachelor of Science in Sports Medicine + Master of Athletic Training programs, strong graduation and retention rates, accredited professional and health science offerings and high student engagement ranking. For more information about the University, visit cedarville.edu.