University of Maine third-year defensive end Michael Kozlakowski still remembers exactly how his shoulder felt when he tore a muscle at the beginning of last season, an injury that required surgery and sidelined him for the second straight season.
While the physical pain was taxing, the emotional toll was difficult on the hard-working business student.
That’s where head athletic trainer Ryan Taylor stepped in.
“As an athlete who hadn’t been injured before, Ryan Taylor took me under his wing and told me everything was going to be alright and just took it day by day,” Kozlakowski recalls.
Taylor’s life in athletic training started at his alma mater, the University of Toledo. He earned his master’s in administration and sports management before teaching high school and serving as the head athletic trainer for the St. Louis Attack arena football team.
On Sundays, Taylor would make his way to the St. Louis Rams’ stadium to help out as a volunteer athletic trainer.
“I’d get there Sunday morning and make sure the opposing team had water and ice and those kind of things,” Taylor said. “I didn’t really do much there other than taking care of amenities and whatever they needed.”
After 10 years of work in St. Louis, Taylor and his wife made their way to the University of Maine Presque Isle where he oversaw the men’s football team for three years before making the move to UMaine in 2007.
Now, Taylor is the head athletic trainer and oversees football.
“We have 450 athletes. I oversee the six other AT’s,” Taylor said. “We split it up so, for example, my main charge is football, which is 100 athletes.”
The responsibility of an athletic trainer lays heavy, especially when dealing with athletes who want more to push through and play rather than sit out, or even end their career, due to an injury.
“We don’t do that very often but you’re going to have one or two times a year that an athlete’s career comes to an end due to an injury,” he said. “They can be in some cases as young as a sophomore.”
“The hardest thing to do in my position is to disqualify somebody,” Taylor continued. “I tell people all the time: imagine you’re at work and you’re doing your job and somebody walks in the door and says, ‘because of this reason, you’re done.’”
Taylor’s job is made even more difficult by the fact that he has a personal relationship with most, if not all, UMaine athletes and genuinely wants to see each of them succeed.
“The one thing about Ryan is that he knows everyone through in and through out every sport,” Kozlakowski said. “You’re not just another number or another athlete to him. Everyone has a different relationship with him and that’s what brings out the best in him.”
When it comes to player safety, Taylor explains that there is a fine line between allowing a player to push through the pain and “tough it out” and sending them down a path where they will end up re-injured.
“We always err on the side of safety and always air on the side of caution, but that doesn’t mean we give players days off,” he said. “These athletes do have a responsibility to the University, to their team to get out there and perform. We try and push the envelop. We try and be aggressive and conservative at the same time. We are cautiously aggressive, which doesn’t make sense, but we’re going to push it but the as the athletes want to play and we go along with it but we aren’t going to let them go into that gray area where they’re in danger.”
Taylor takes the responsibility of his position very seriously, though that responsibility and the results that come from working with players are what keep Taylor going even when he sees players out with injuries.
“I like keeping people on the field,” he said. “I like seeing our quarterback get hit, have to leave the game, and work hard with him so he can play the next week.”
Taylor is well-liked by the players that he works with, which they show by the steady stream of visitors making funny faces and waving to him through the windows of his office.
As the person who can hold the career of a student-athlete in his hands, Taylor has a knack for making them feel comfortable even in their darkest times.
“Ryan was always calm and his emotions never got the best of him,” Kozlakowski said. “Sometimes when you get injured people get emotional too and it kind of brings you down but he was always there to support me throughout.”