InvestigATe: Inspiring the Next Generation
The AT4Me InvestigATe Program 2026-27 cycle is now open! Below, a 2025-26 cycle sponsor shares the impact the program had on her students and how she brought the checklist’s 10 activities to life.
By Erika Miller, MA, LAT, ATC
“What do I need to do to become you one day?”
It seems like it was only yesterday, but more than 20 years ago, a young high school student came out to football practice one hot afternoon in sunny Florida and asked me that very question. She started coming to practice every day after that. She loved learning about the amazing profession of athletic training and quickly became one of my first high school athletic training student aides. I’m beyond proud to say that she is now not only one of my colleagues but also graduated this past summer with her Doctorate in Athletic Training.
With the athletic training profession continuing to grow and gain recognition, it’s no surprise that young people are interested in learning more about what athletic trainers do, what it takes to enter the profession and what a career in athletic training might look like.
During the 76th NATA Clinical Symposia & AT Expo in Orlando in 2025, the Secondary School Town Hall introduced a pilot program designed specifically for high school students called InvestigATe. As an athletic trainer in the secondary school setting for 25 years, this immediately caught my attention. I wanted to know more.
The AT4Me InvestigATe Pilot Program launched in November 2025 as a checklist of 10 interactive activities designed to help students discover who athletic trainers are, learn more about the settings in which they work and access valuable resources to help them begin their journey toward a career in athletic training. I immediately registered, met with my athletic training student aides and encouraged them all to register as well. As a group, we discussed how we could best incorporate InvestigATe into our program. With the holidays being such a busy time of year, we decided to make it our National Athletic Training Month (NATM) project. Our goal was for every student to complete the checklist, learn more about the profession and then share what they learned with others during this important month.
The students embraced the challenge. They created posters highlighting information they learned through the activities, shadowed and observed athletic trainers in our local community, became CPR certified and helped teach others about lifesaving CPR skills. What began as a checklist quickly became an opportunity for them to explore the profession, develop new skills and become ambassadors for athletic training.
For many of the students, the highlight of the InvestigATe experience was the interview activity. Because my students already knew about my love for athletic training and how I entered the profession, I challenged them to step outside their comfort zones and interview someone else. I put out a request on my social media platforms asking athletic trainers to volunteer their time, and I was thrilled by the response. Local athletic trainers volunteered to come to our school and meet with students. Others who lived farther away participated through Zoom. One student aide who was working an away game even contacted the host athletic trainer before the game and asked if he could interview him as part of his InvestigATe project. The students loved the experience – and I loved watching them make connections with athletic trainers beyond our school and local community.
The interviews did more than help students learn about athletic training. They also gave them an opportunity to develop important professional and social skills that will serve them well in any career. Students had to properly introduce themselves, develop interview questions in advance, conduct the interview and video-record their conversations. They had to communicate professionally, listen carefully and engage with someone they had never met before. Those are real-world skills that can’t always be taught in a classroom.
Students who completed the program were highlighted on our sports medicine Instagram page. And, because I know one thing that motivates high school students better than almost anything else – a T-shirt – I used the InvestigATe templates provided by NATA to create shirts for the students who completed the program.
The feedback from the students was just as inspiring as watching them complete the activities. They not only enjoyed learning about athletic training, but they also gained exposure to different perspectives, work settings, career paths and the realities of becoming an athletic trainer.
“I learned that the field is not as easy as it looks, and that they do so much more that no one knows,” one student said.
“I enjoyed interviewing another athletic trainer,” another student said. “It was a very eye-opening experience to hear their real-world stories.”
Perhaps most importantly, the students began learning more about themselves. Throughout the process, many reflected on their own strengths and weaknesses, the importance of teamwork and collaboration, communication and listening skills, and the areas in which they wanted to continue to grow.
One student summed it up by saying, “This really opened my eyes to the importance of listening and learning because there is so much to learn to become an athletic trainer.”
That is exactly what I hoped they would discover. InvestigATe gave these students a window into a profession they may have never considered before. It allowed them to see athletic training from multiple perspectives and begin thinking about where they might fit within the profession.
As the InvestigATe Program relaunches for 2026-27, I would highly encourage athletic trainers who work with high school students to participate. Programs like InvestigATe provide an incredible opportunity to introduce students to our profession long before they begin making decisions about college and careers. More importantly, they allow us to share the realities of athletic training – the rewards, challenges, variety of settings, opportunities for growth and the impact athletic trainers have on the lives of others.
My first high school student aide asked me more than 20 years ago, “What do I need to do to become you one day?” Today, she is my colleague. That experience reminds me that we never know which student sitting in our athletic training facility, standing on our sideline, or asking questions after practice may one day become one of us.
As we look toward the future of athletic training, we have an incredible responsibility and opportunity to introduce, encourage, mentor and inspire the next generation. InvestigATe is one more way we can plant those seeds – and help the next generation discover where a career in athletic training might take them.
