Jun 3, 201549ers Hire Team’s First Female Athletic Trainer
The San Francisco 49ers have hired a female assistant athletic trainer, the first in the club’s history and only the third full-time female athletic trainer in the NFL. The team has yet to publish a press release on its new addition, Laura Schnettgoecke, or to add her to the website, but the 49ers confirmed that Schnettgoecke has been working with the team for a couple of months, as reported by CSNBayArea.com.
Schnettgoecke replaces assistant athletic trainer Nate Breske, who accepted a head athletic trainer position with the Chicago Bears. She comes from Texas Tech, where she had worked as assistant athletic trainer for women’s soccer since 2008.
According to CSNBayArea.com, the two other full-time female athletic trainers to have worked in the NFL are Ariko Iso, now Head Athletic Trainer at Oregon State University, who was formerly with the Pittsburgh Steelers for nine years, and Sonia Gysland, who is currently an Assistant Athletic Trainer with the Steelers.
Gysland wrote about her experiences in the NFL as part of a 2014 T&C article on jobs in professional sports. Iso shared her thoughts on being a female athletic trainer in the male-dominated world of pro football for a 2011 article.
