From Day 1 to 32 years: An Aggie icon
It’s a warm Friday in September, and his day, like most others, begins at 8 a.m.
Dale Mildenberger, USU’s head athletic trainer for the past 32 years and counting, reviews the past day with his staff – two full-timers, 11 graduate assistants – then takes care of administrative matters, as he’s also senior associate athletic director and an associate professor.
Team practices for most of USU’s 16 sports come later in the day, ending around 6 p.m. Then comes the time to care for athletes who need treatment and then prepare and send an injury report to each coach.
8 p.m. rolls around and it’s finally time go home and kick back for a pleasant weekend of rest, right? Hardly. Not with a football game Saturday night. And, even on Sunday, injuries, bruises and the like need to be attended to.
“I heard a strange rumor that at the end of every five-day work period there’s a thing called a weekend,” Mildenberger quipped. “I’ve heard rumors about those things, but I’ve never experienced it.”
Mildenberger has been putting in this kind of seven-day-a-week, August-to-April effort of caring for Aggie athletes for nearly three and a half decades. More or less, his work is unnoticed by those outside the athletic department. But those who are around him most and know him best are very aware.
That’s why, very fittingly, in early August of this year, fourth-year Athletic Director Randy Spetman had Mildenberger’s name put onto the new sports medicine complex (now the Dale Mildenberger Sports Medicine Complex), which, for those who don’t know, is the back half of the new north end zone facility at Romney Stadium.
“He’s a person that’s dedicated his life to Utah State,” Spetman said. “He has made the best of what the university has provided him.”
Mildenberger is currently the most tenured employee the athletic department has. His long-term diligence has brought him inductions into the National Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame (1994), the Rocky Mountain Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame (1998), and he was named to the inaugural Utah Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame in 2003.
As recently as 2004, Mildenberger was named the Utah Athletic Trainer of the Year.
Needless to say, his resume speaks for itself.
GETTING RECOGNITION
Where does having his name on what he himself said is easily now one of the top 10 sports medicine facilities in the country rank?
“Nothing has come close to this recognition simply because I’ve got a lot of personal commitment and time to this institution,” he said. “To have that rewarded by the institution itself really is an extreme compliment. I’m humbled, but very, very pleased. It’s recognition of a body of work I obviously am proud of. It would be the highlight of my career without a doubt.”
Dr. John Worley, who was the football team physician from 1959 to 1999, considers Mildenberger one of his closest associates, as the two worked hand-in-hand with the team from the time Mildenberger began at USU.
Even so, it wasn’t until this past Monday that Worley found out about the honor for Mildenberger.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Worley said. “Dale’s not the kind of guy to go around making a big deal of himself. (But) good, that’s what they should have done. Dale is one of the best trainers in the country. He has done everything that could be done to improve the quality of sports medicine at USU. The best way I can say it is this: If I ever had a son with a serious injury on the football field, I’d have Dale Mildenberger care for him on the field.”
SWITCHING FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW
To give an idea of what Mildenberger, a native of Greeley, Colo., has had to work with for the majority of his time at USU, just consider this statistic: The new area for sports medicine encompasses 11,000 square feet; the old sports medicine facility was just over 900 square feet. Mildenberger also said the old facility was the worst physical facility for sports medicine in collegiate football at any division.
“With what he had to work with over the years, many others might have moved on,” Spetman said. “That’s what has made him an icon here. He has done it by using community resources and university resources.”
With 16 sports and 300 student-athletes every year, Mildenberger said normal conversations in the old building didn’t exist.
“Before practices there was a constant roar of noise,” he said. “In (the new facility), while you still get the feeling of conversations, you don’t get the feeling of the roar.”
So, now it’s quieter and there’s no need to yell. That kind of an atmosphere with lots of space is much more conducive to one-on-one interaction with athletes than previously. Worley said Mildenberger’s desire to care for athletes in this respect has always been his best characteristic as a trainer.
BEFORE USU: HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS AND WEST POINT
His career at USU began in 1975, but sports medicine was his passion long before that.
As a member of the football team during his sophomore year of high school, Mildenberger went with his team to watch the Colorado State football squad play. While there, the coach took them into the locker room and training room.
“It was quite obvious I wasn’t going to go beyond (high school level football),” Mildenberger said. “I saw what trainers were doing and thought, ‘Ah, maybe that’s what I want to do.'”
So he did it. He enrolled at Colorado State in 1969 – a year in which he had a stint with the Harlem Globetrotters (a world-renowned traveling basketball show) as their head trainer, and a year in which he was drafted into the military. At the United States Military Academy in West Point, he was the assistant athletic trainer. When his service concluded in 1972, he went back to the Globetrotters and later became a 1973 graduate of CSU. Two years later, he received his master’s from the University of Arizona.
As head trainer for the Globetrotters, he was able to visit 39 countries around the world.
“That was quite an experience for somebody from Greeley, Colo., to see the world and all of a sudden be in Hong Kong, Paris, Rio DiGenaro, Sydney,” he said.
USU: ‘FULFILLING AND WORTHWHILE”
With a head athletic trainer absence left by Jim Riley and the football season about to begin in 1975, Mildenberger was called by USU to fill the hole.
He accepted, though a bit reluctantly.
“The one thing I never counted on in taking this job was that I never counted on liking it,” Mildenberger said. “I was not from the area, I was not of the predominant faith. I really had no history here.”
It was, nevertheless, a professional opportunity that would have been unwise to turn down.
Now, with his wife Kathy and four grown children, Mildenberger is still here. Why?
“Utah State wasn’t my lifetime dream – it just happened,” he said. “What I discovered is that while Utah State isn’t everything, it’s not bad. The community, the university, the experience, the lifestyle is something my family has made as their home. It’s been fulfilling and worthwhile.”
-samuel.hislop@aggiemail.usu.edu