Asked about the importance of having certified athletic trainers available to care for athletes at high school athletic events, Dave Gosselin relayed the following story:

“I’ll give you an example of how valuable they are,” said Gosselin, director of athletics for Manchester’s public high schools. “One year we had a young man at (Manchester High) West get hurt. The trainer noticed that something wasn’t quite right with him. Turns out (the athlete) had a tumor that could have been life-threatening.

“If we didn’t have a trainer there that day, we wouldn’t have known. The parents wouldn’t have known.”

The trainer at West that day was provided by the Safe Sports Network, the largest program under the umbrella of the New Hampshire Musculoskeletal Institute. The NHMI is a nonprofit organization, and the Safe Sports Network is focused on safety in youth and interscholastic sports.

“Our vision is for every school to have an athletic trainer,” said Laura Decoster, NHMI’s executive director. “I would love to see every high school athlete have the benefit of having an athletic trainer. Right now, we’re trying to grow our donor foundation so we can be more secure in what we do.”

The Safe Sports Network currently provides athletic trainers to nine New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association high schools: Manchester Central, Manchester Memorial, West, Bedford, Bishop Guertin of Nashua, Goffstown, Pelham, Salem and Windham. Some schools pay a fee, but the Manchester schools are among those who receive Safe Sports Network’s services for free.

“These people provide a service that would cost the Manchester school district astronomical numbers — and we don’t pay a dime for it,” Gosselin said. “They provide a trainer on site at games or practices, or availability to a trainer. We’re pretty spread out (on game sites), so they may have to jump in a car.

“I can’t say enough for what these people do for us. What they do for the city of Manchester ... you can’t put a dollar amount on it. We wouldn’t be able to afford them.”

The Safe Sports Network, which operates out of Apple Therapy Services office at 29 Kosciuszko St. in Manchester, also provides free physicals to athletes each June and offers a walk-in injury clinic for any athlete whose school does not have an athletic trainer.

Keith Belmore oversees the Safe Sports Network, which has 10 athletic trainers on staff in addition to those who work at the walk-in clinic. He said those trainers evaluated 1,185 injuries last year.

“Out of those, 817 were treated by athletic trainers in-house,” he said. “There was no referral.”

According to Decoster, the number of athletic trainers at NHIAA schools has tripled during the last 10 years. She estimated that 50 of the 90 NHIAA schools in New Hampshire (there is one NHIAA school in Vermont) have “full-time” athletic trainers.

“There’s still a lot of confusion out there because a lot of people think of us as personal trainers,” she said. “Others just don’t know the value of having an athletic trainer on site.

“I like to use the following analogy: A low percentage of parents would drop off their children at a public pool if there was no lifeguard, but they drop them off every day for sports assuming there’s somebody on site who could treat a sports injury. That’s not necessarily a safe assumption.”

Like Gosselin, Goffstown’s director of athletics, Steve Fountain, praised the service the Safe Sports Network provides.

Fountain said that while trainers are important for treating all manner of injuries and ailments, the heightened awareness of the seriousness of concussions has unerscored their value.

“We had a boy from an opposing soccer team get knocked out cold. You can take all the first-aid classes you want, but if we didn’t have a trainer, I would have walked out on that field and not known what to do,” he said. “There aren’t enough superlatives to describe what (trainers) do.”

Last year the Safe Sports Network extended its care to several youth-sports organizations, including the Derry Demons and Manchester Bears football programs.

“We really want to treat as many kids as possible,” Decoster said. “People just don’t know we’re here.”

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Roger Brown may be reached at rbrown@unionleader.com.