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In a sweaty locker room atmosphere, a man is pretty much around, he is in the whirlpool area, the training room table, the men’s locker rooms and the women’s locker rooms, the playing field, the racetracks, wherever he is to be found, he is tending to the athletes, mending their ailments, doing the “quick fixes,” immobilizing them as well as making them more mobile, and so they can be ready to go out to play and perform at their highest level, at the same time helping prevent injuries that sideline them.

This high octane type of activity is what this man, called a Certified Athletic Trainer (ATC), thrives to be around for, constantly moving around and wrapping players’ ankles, knees, elbows, fingers, toes and wrists, whatever is to be fixed.

And this particular man is a Deaf certified athletic trainer.

His name is Lonnie Tanenberg, an assistant certified athletic trainer at Mills College in Oakland, CA currently. He graduated from California State University at Northridge (CSUN) with a B.S. in Kinesiology with an option of Athletic Training. He took a semester of Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) later on to add onto his experience.

Tanenberg does the US MotoGP circuit currently, being the only deaf person in the medical field that work with professional motorsports. He will be the head trainer for the USA team in the 21st Summer Deaflympics Taipei 2009 in Taiwan.

He also served as an intern ATC to the Oakland Athletics of Major League Baseball (MLB), hanging out with the Barry Zito, Mark Mudler, and Tim Hudson trio in the summer of 2003, teaching A’s players some signs and messing around with them, pulling pranks on each other and being fun to be with, a personable personality that even professional players find extraordinary.

Said Stephen Sayles, the head athletic trainer for the Oakland Athletics, “I enjoyed the time that I spent with Lonnie. He showed me that a hearing impaired person with minor alterations can perform at this job. He has a great sense of humor and can even make fun of himself, which in this setting is important because these guys do not leave any stone unturned when they start in on some one. When they
would start in on Lonnie he would give it right back to them.”

Tanenberg likes to drive fast, too, to feel the rush of asphalt screeching as he makes a turn in his 2001 Estoril Blue BMW M Coupe. He has the demeanor to do just that then walk into a room filled with people and joke with people in the same sitting. That makes up for any obstacles he had to go through, having to read lips and trying his best to communicate with them. The easy going manner is also displayed when he becomes serious as he focuses on attending to players, recognizing and evaluating injuries, tending to accordingly and participating in helping players to rehabilitate their injuries, perhaps pushing them to be even better shape than ever before.

Nothing rattles him from a professional point of view, Tanenberg exudes the confidence knowing he can step in and help someone
immediately without hesitation, approaching it from a medical point of view. He is careful to be on the same page with everyone, that is really the key, he has the equilibrium, having the ability to separate himself from the emotions seeing people getting hurt or even killed in sports, such as racing, in his line of work. Otherwise Tanenberg knows, he doesn’t belong on the field if he cannot handle seeing something serious happen.

Says Tanenberg, “I have dealt with two major incidents in US MotoGP 2005 and 2007, I have learned that you need to be in control of the situation otherwise you lose your focus and the patient. As well as their confidence in you when you are caring for them. It is imperative to their health and well being.”

What prompted Tanenberg to rise to the occasion of becoming a certified athletic trainer? Especially if you have to be a highly qualified healthcare professional educated in preventing, recognizing, managing and rehabilitating injuries? As part of a complete healthcare team, the athletic trainer works under the direction of a physician and in cooperation with other healthcare professionals, athletic administrators, coaches and parents. That is a big responsibility. He even has to keep up with the medical advances, just like every healthcare professional.

As Lonnie approached 12 years old of age, his mother was in graduate school to become a psychologist, and she was studying for her Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT) using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II) medical books. He would pore over those books as well as the anatomy books that was collecting dust, absorbing medicinal knowledge and he was always ever learning, spending hours and hours learning about that stuff.

Not only did he became familiar with the human body anatomy but he played sports, P.E. was his favorite class. It naturally occurred to him to put the two of them as sports medicine, and he found his niche when he was still riding bicycles as a young kid. Sports medicine grew on him, and the psychology reversal became that college and pro players grew on him, too.

Tanenberg belongs on the sidelines, the field, in the athletic training tables at locker room clubhouses, fitting right in, by using a combination of lipreading, verbal speech, and hand signs, maintaining eye contact with players as he took care of them. That was his epiphany to having a true career as an ATC.

Says Tanenberg, “My dream is to work in the professional field, either in Major League Baseball or National Football League. Maybe NASCAR.”

It indeed will be a challenge for Tanenberg to make it to that level because there are a limited number of professional teams ATCs can work for. His internship with the MLB Athletics and in college sports, the US MotoGP events, the Deaflympics, the World Deaf Cycling Championships, the USADB National Tournaments, among other sanctioned events certainly brings a wealth of experience to his resume, enhancing his chances of eventually one day working in pro sports.

Added Sayles, “Lonnie has a strong personality, which is important when you are working with major league ball players. He did not shy away from the atmosphere that he found himself in, which is easy to do. He asserted himself with the players and let them know what he was there to do. He was a self starter and took the lead when players would come in, and ask them if he could help them out. I was very impressed with that.”

That might be the steppingstone for Tanenberg to become an ATC with a professional sports team.

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