ASU trainer, 66, always on the job

Ron Carroll will serve his 500th consecutive game as Arkansas State’s head athletic trainer Saturday when the Red Wolves take on Georgia Southern. In 43 seasons, Carroll has missed one practice.
Ron Carroll will serve his 500th consecutive game as Arkansas State’s head athletic trainer Saturday when the Red Wolves take on Georgia Southern. In 43 seasons, Carroll has missed one practice.

JONESBORO -- Ron Carroll crunches one hand into a fist, smashes it into the palm of the other, grunts and precisely recalls every detail of the week in March 2013 that still haunts him.

Five years ago on a Saturday, he remembers, a piercing pain spawned from his gallbladder. He was urged to have surgery.

Not even 24 hours later, the Carrolls went to church and ate lunch at their favorite Jonesboro-based Italian restaurant, Lazzari Italian Oven. That Wednesday, while eating leftovers from Lazzarri's, Carroll's pain flared up and a second episode began.

Surgery became a necessity.

"Well, we've got spring football starting on Monday," Carroll recalled telling the surgery's scheduler. "Can we wait a week?"

Carroll, who's parsed through the aching memory too many times to count, down to every meal and emotion, returned to work the next day. Fearing the organ rupturing and infection spreading, Carroll decided to go ahead with the surgery.

Surgery is set for the following Monday and Carroll, while woozy and foggy from anesthesia, unsurprisingly requests to go to work the same day.

"Really?" his wife, Vicki, replied. "I think we just need to go home."

"If you want, we can drive by and look at the field. But you can't do anything."

The week -- and the oh-so vivid details -- forever reside years later in the busy mind of Carroll, 66. That Monday of the surgery has been the only practice Arkansas State University's head certified athletic trainer has missed since 1976, the first of a 43-season journey conjoining Carroll to what he loves: the Red Wolves.

Days before his 500th consecutive career game as ASU's head athletic trainer Saturday at Georgia Southern, Carroll is tucked in his cramped office, relishing the 499 consecutive game weeks and thousands of practices that preceded this special week.

"That's where it started," Carroll recalled when ASU's now 10-person athletic training staff featured one member, himself, 42 years ago.

He remembered when his training staff was sequestered in one of four trailers that housed the ASU football program's offices for years before they moved into a temporary building into 1980.

He then recalled when that building, which housed all of the team's equipment and gear, caught fire because a golf cart ignited the blaze while parked in a garage. Insurance money from the fire helped begin construction on the building where Carroll's current office -- the brain of everything health-related in ASU's athletic department -- is now located.

The hub and handler of ASU's medical bills, Carroll's office requires "organization" only he can navigate.

Two five-drawer, tan filing cabinets are squeezed into a corner and hold every athlete's medical bill from 2011-2018, although a few drawers are untitled. Plaques, some for national awards and others for state or ASU-related achievements, give life to the walls surrounding Carroll's desk. A large white calendar contains every hour Carroll's worked in September.

Carroll's days generally begin around 5-6 a.m. and end whenever the final player completes post-practice treatment. The length of his work days varies since there's no set script. All days are mostly spent away from home.

"I've got to be here," he says. "You can't miss work."

Carroll hasn't missed a single fall practice since his first contract at ASU began as a nine-month, $8,500 agreement to be the school's first head athletic trainer in 1976. He begins every day on his computer.

His "scorecard" must be updated each morning and immediately fired off to all of the school's full-time coaches. The scorecard, a color-coordinated spreadsheet, is updated with the severity of every injury and the time of the injury of all ASU athletes. One side of the sheet is for football, the other is for other sports.

The sheet is folded neatly and spends every day in the front-facing pocket of Carroll's shirt (he never wears one without a pocket for this very reason). His famous chrome pen, which many know not to touch if left around the office, sits in the pocket with the scorecard and a pair of glasses.

If a player acquires a new injury, out comes the pen and Carroll begins manually updating the scorecard. Nothing goes unwritten, or he'll forget. Coaches then wouldn't know, treatment would be missed and the duration of the injury could be extended unintentionally.

"The only place I don't keep it is when I sleep," he said of the scorecard.

Carroll's days in 2018 look differently now than they have before. Eleven head coaching changes and 11 athletic directors have traversed his tenure, which he began when he was 24 years old. During the first portion of ASU's Wednesday practice with the team fully assembled, Carroll marches around and updates the scorecard after checking on pertinent injuries.

Forty-three seasons into the daily grind of football practices, Carroll is cautiously paranoid.

A mouthpiece sits on the corner of one end zone at Centennial Bank Stadium, Carroll grabs it and throws it away.

A few steps later, a rock appears. A paper water cup and other small trash does, too. Carroll grabs it all, throws it away.

"Injuries waiting to happen," he quips.

Like he has for the past five years, Carroll splits with the defense after the full team portion concludes. Erik Ennis, one of ASU's four assistant trainers under Carroll, handles the offense.

A 2003 inductee into the National Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame, Carroll sprints over as one defender deals with a potential head injury. The word concussion is delicately used by Carroll who begins reciting the steps for entering concussion protocol like it's habitual.

Throughout the day, another player asks Carroll for a cold compression and assistance elevating his leg. Another player is sick (a cold is spreading, so there's explanation for a dozen gallon-sized jugs of hand sanitizer in Carroll's office), and asks for medicine and a new mouthpiece. The phone rings.

An imaging center needs confirmation a player will make his lunchtime appointment later this week to inspect a potential injury.

"He'll be there," says a knowing Carroll.

Three moments could've stolen Carroll from ASU -- something proven to be impossible. A career in politics and a call from Hugh Freeze were the most tempting.

Carroll officially ran for the District 56 seat in Arkansas' House of Representatives in 2014. Freeze, ASU and Ole Miss' former coach, wanted to poach Carroll with an opening on his staff after 2011. Another out of state job offer swung and missed. While the attempts were flattering, Carroll -- whose family calls St. Louis its hometown -- said he found home in Jonesboro.

"This is my school," he said.

Saturday’s game

ARKANSAS STATE AT GEORGIA SOUTHERN

WHEN 5 p.m. Central

WHERE Paulson Stadium, Statesboro, Ga.

TV None

Sports on 09/28/2018

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