New Augustana assistant athletic trainer Kristin Jaskolski joins the Augustana athletic training staff for the 2016-2017 school year, replacing former Augustana athletic trainer Sean Morse.
Morse recently took a position at Muhlenberg College, leaving the Augustana training staff in need of another trainer.
Jaskolski will be responsible for a multitude of sports at Augustana. She’ll be the trainer for men’s and women’s cross country, men’s and women’s tennis, men’s wrestling and men’s and women’s lacrosse.
Before coming to Augustana, Jaskolski worked as a graduate assistant at the athletic training staff at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota.
She was responsible for many of the sports she is responsible for here at Augustana, besides men’s and women’s lacrosse, and was also the trainer for the women’s volleyball team there.
At the same time, she also worked for Sanford Health in Fargo, North Dakota as an athletic trainer for various high schools, middle schools and youth teams in hockey, football, baseball and wrestling.
During the summer before she came to Augustana, Jaskolski was helping with the J Robinson Intensive Camps. She said there were four different camps and the experience was 66 days long. She traveled throughout the U.S. to states such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Iowa and California.
“It was crazy intense,” Jaskolski said. “But it was a really good learning experience. It was all high schoolers that came and was close to 1000 different high school athletes.”
Jaskolski first found the position at the beginning of the summer and applied for the position on-line. She had her first interview at the end of June and found she was offered the position in the middle of July.
She was elated to know she had landed the position at Augustana and said she was able to adjust quickly to the program as her undergraduate program was similar to the one at Augustana.
Assistant athletic trainer Jay Clark was part of the interview process and said she appeared excited at for the challenges of filling Morse’s position and was a strong candidate overall.
“Her past experiences with cross country and wrestling also gave her a strong understanding of some of the challenges she will face here in the upcoming months,” Clark said. “She was the most complete athletic trainer we interviewed and it was immediately apparent to us that she fit our department needs well.”
Jaskolski said she didn’t always want to be an athletic trainer and wanted to be a teacher. She said during her senior year of high school that she said she never wanted to be an athletic trainer.
Fate had some other plans as she took athletic training classes as part of a coaching minor she was pursuing. She then found her passion for athletic training and made the switch.
Now Jaskolski finds herself at Augustana college, where she’s really enjoyed the Augustana campus, the “super gorgeous” facilities and how welcoming the training staff is.
As Jaskolski begins working and getting settled here at Augustana, she said she was excited for the upcoming year.
“It’s been fun so far and learning everything always takes a bit, but I’m excited,” Jaskolski said.