Every successful athlete can point to a dozen reasons why he or she has an advantage over the competition.

Training, coaching, diet and natural ability — these are some of things that would top any athlete’s list. But during the past few years athletes participating in every sport at South Whidbey High School have come to depend on one more factor to bring out their best: athletic trainers.

On a recent day in the school’s training room — which doubles as a home economics classroom — about a half-dozen athletes from the boys and girls track teams were waiting after school to get patched up. They limped in with pulled hamstrings, shinsplints and tender knees. Waiting for them were two student athletic trainers, teacher Jim Christensen, and a room full of high-tech gadgets that trace their roots to the training programs created by the Soviet bloc sports machine of the 1970s and ’80s.

This is sports medicine for a new millennium — sports medicine that fixes injuries, then sends athletes back out to train and compete. It’s something the old methods of treatment couldn’t do.

“You can’t treat injuries like this with ice and tape,” Christensen said.

A physical therapist in practice on South Whidbey, Christensen is in his second year of teaching an athletic training vocational class and serving as the school’s professional trainer. The 5-year-old program has come a long way from its basic beginnings, when tape, ice and a few stretching exercises were the only therapy available.

During the past two school years, Christensen has showed up at the school daily, wheeling a huge duffel bag full of $20,000 of electrical stimulation and ultrasound machines he owns in hopes of keeping more kids playing soccer, shooting hoops or running long miles.

Senior David Glassmoyer, who has been a student trainer for four years, said he is able to help injured athletes more now than he could during his freshman and sophomore years.

“We’re actually able to get them back out there,” he said.

How they do it looks a little weird, compared to the days of wrapping inflamed tendons with tape. Lying on his stomach on one of the formica topped home economics tables in the room, track athlete Tyler Mosier kept his eyes averted from his legs, which involuntarily twitched every couple of minutes as an electrical stimulation machine ran a low-voltage current up against a bad case of shinsplints. After about five minutes of that, Glassmoyer disconnected the electrical leads, then massaged Mosier’s shins with a hand-held ultrasound machine.

Afterwards, Mosier could walk out of the training room without the stabbing pains that afflict him throughout the school day. It’s something he said ice could never do.

“They feel so much better,” he said.

Results like this have caught the attention of both athletes and coaches at the high school. Track coach Doug Fulton, whose boys and girls teams just won their third consecutive conference championships, said many of his top runners would not be competing this season if it were not for the trainers.

“It’s been a huge difference,” he said.

That’s exactly the sort of praise the trainers like to hear, whether they are in the training room or at one of the hundreds of athletic events they attend in an official capacity each year. A few words of thanks can be all it takes to start a career.

Starting a career is what many of Christensen’s students are doing. Senior trainer Andy MacDonald, who with his oversized backpack filled with training and medical gear is a familiar sight on the sidelines, said it wasn’t just the personal fulfillment that got him interested in sports training. It was the desire for a good career.

“It was just the fact that I heard they were looking for people in this field,” he said.

Other trainers in the school’s program, like freshmen Brittany Wheeler and Michelle McGowan, are setting their career goals early. Knowing they need several hundred hours of experience to get into the top college athletic training programs in the country, they started with Christensen’s basic athletic training class this year, then signed on as trainer interns to treat injuries in the daily, after-school program.

Wheeler said she has no reservations about diving into the training field.

“That’s what I want to be,” she said.

Being a trainer requires a serious commitment, one Christensen said he hopes a number of incoming freshmen will make for the next school year. With only eight trainers working this spring, he said he is shorthanded, especially on busy days that can bring up to 30 injured athletes to the training room.

Students who finish four years of interning under Christensen have a working knowledge of anatomy, kinesiology, first aid and physical therapy. Speaking proudly of Glassmoyer’s skills, Christensen said the senior student can choose his future.

“He can walk into any professional or college training room right now and start working,” he said.

Christensen said he hopes to expand the training program in coming years, both to benefit athletes and student trainers. He would like to start an advanced athletic training class and outfit a training room with proper treatment tables and up-to-date equipment.