A high school athletic trainer is the healthcare professional a school puts behind its student-athletes: injury prevention, sideline emergency care, rehabilitation and return-to-play.
At private and charter schools the position can be a direct hire or contracted coverage, and the path into it is specific.
It runs through a master's degree from a CAATE-accredited program, the Board of Certification exam and, in the 49 states plus DC that regulate athletic training, a state license.
What is a high school athletic trainer?
An athletic trainer is a healthcare professional whose work centers on preventing injuries and responding to them — and at a high school, the population is the student-athletes across every team the school fields.
The visible part of the role is sideline coverage: being at practices and games, evaluating injuries as they happen, and making the first call on whether a student can keep playing.
Around the sideline work sits everything else: rehabilitation sessions for injured athletes, injury documentation, and the communication loop with coaches and families.
The National Athletic Trainers' Association (NATA) calls a full-time athletic trainer the gold standard of care for secondary schools.
Schools are a major employer of the profession: BLS puts 40% of athletic trainer employment in educational services, counting state, local and private employers together.
The title can mislead: the requirements below are clinical credentials on a healthcare track, not coaching certifications.
That track is also why the path into the job is a long one — a master's degree, a national board exam and, in the states that regulate the profession, a state license all sit between a candidate and the sideline.
Which private and charter schools employ athletic trainers?
The picture our research has of where private schools employ athletic trainers comes from a 2016 study in the Journal of Athletic Training, built on data collected from 2011 to 2014.
It found a full-time athletic trainer at 28% of U.S. private secondary schools, against 37% of public secondary schools.
Athletic training services of some kind were present at 58% of private secondary schools and 70% of public ones — a category that reaches beyond a full-time hire.
Those numbers describe schools as they were in the early 2010s, so read them as the study's picture of the field, not a live headcount of today's postings.
The share employing an athletic trainer tracked enrollment closely: 44% of private secondary schools enrolling 100 to 199 students employed an athletic trainer, and the figure reached 90% among private schools with 400 to 499 students.
The researchers pointed to budget, small school size and lack of awareness of the athletic trainer's role as the barriers.
For a candidate, that gradient is the practical map: the share of private schools employing an athletic trainer climbed with enrollment, so the larger private schools were where an athletic trainer job was most likely to exist.
Our research did not surface a comparable employment figure for charter schools, so read the numbers above as the private-secondary-school picture.
The licensing side, by contrast, is set by the state you practice in rather than by whether a school is private or charter — the next section covers it.
How a school staffs its coverage is its own decision, and the study's two categories — a full-time trainer on staff, or "some athletic training services" — leave the second group's staffing model uncounted.
When you read postings, two structures can sit behind the same job title: a direct position with the school, or a placement on campus under a contract between the school and an outside sports medicine provider that employs the trainer.
The difference matters to you: it changes who your employer is, who you report to, and which benefits and policies apply to you.
If a posting does not say which structure applies, ask — it is a fair interview question, and the answer shapes everything from payroll to schedule.
Required credentials: BOC certification and a state license
The credential path into athletic training runs through national requirements first, and then each state regulates practice on top.
It starts with education: to become a certified athletic trainer, you must graduate with a master's degree from a CAATE-accredited professional athletic training education program.
The exam comes next: the Board of Certification (BOC) administers the comprehensive test every candidate must pass.
Certification carries obligations after that, too — certified trainers meet continuing education requirements to keep the credential.
Then comes the state layer: according to the BOC, 49 states and the District of Columbia regulate the practice of athletic training, and an individual must be legally recognized by the state regulatory agency before practicing.
The BOC draws the line plainly: earning BOC certification does not guarantee the ability to obtain a license.
Treat them as two separate gates, then — the BOC exam certifies you as an athletic trainer, and the regulatory board in the state where you intend to work decides whether you may practice there.
If you are moving between states for a school job, check the destination state's board before you assume a license carries over.
What a particular private or charter school asks for on top of that is the school's own hiring requirement, and the posting tells you.
Confirm current credential rules
Working with the athletic director, coaches and school nurse
Inside a school, the athletic trainer sits on the athletics side of the building, and three working relationships define the job.
The first is the athletic director, who runs the program the trainer works inside.
The NIAAA describes athletic administration as extending beyond scheduling, transportation, officials and equipment into sport law, risk management, coaches' education and policy enforcement on eligibility, playoffs, certification and budget.
Risk management is the shared ground: coverage for teams, safety questions and the documentation around injuries touch both roles, and how a school splits them between the two offices is an interview question.
The second relationship is with the coaches.
The coaching staff is largely drawn from the school's own employees: the Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that high schools typically hire teachers or administrators at the school for most coaching jobs.
Coaching credentials run on a separate track — BLS says coaching certification often requires being at least 18 and trained in CPR and first aid — and those requirements are not athletic training licensure.
On the sideline the relationship runs on communication: the trainer evaluates injuries and advises on when a student can return, and the coach builds the lineup around that advice.
The third relationship is with the school nurse, who runs the health-office side of student care.
A student hurt in a game may move between the two offices afterward — the trainer's rehabilitation notes and the nurse's health records both follow the injury.
How the two offices split record-keeping and family communication is one more thing to ask about when you interview.
Schedule and evenings
The athletics calendar shapes this job more than a bell schedule does.
Practices and games sit outside the academic day.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics describes the in-season result for the coaching side: full-time coaches may work more than 40 hours a week for several months during the sports season, with evening, weekend and holiday hours.
Those are coach numbers, but the events behind them are the same ones an athletic trainer is hired to cover — the practices and games are the job.
So expect the seasons, not a fixed office day, to set your weeks, and expect evenings and weekends to be working time at a school with an active athletics calendar.
Out-of-season weeks look different from in-season ones, and how a school assigns the quieter weeks is another interview question.
Where an athletic trainer also carries coaching or teaching duties, the season calendar is the load-bearing part of the schedule twice over.
When you compare offers, ask how coverage is split across teams and seasons, what the evening and weekend expectations actually are, and whether the schedule comes from the school's contract or an outside provider's.
Find athletic trainer jobs
SchoolHires lists athletic trainer openings at private, independent, faith-based and charter schools, alongside the teaching, leadership and staff roles that surround them.
Browse athletic trainer jobs to see current openings and the requirements schools are actually asking for.
For the occupation as a whole, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a 2025 median pay of $62,520 for athletic trainers and counts 35,200 jobs nationwide.
The growth number is the headline: BLS projects 13% employment growth for athletic trainers from 2025 to 2035, which the agency labels much faster than average.
Keep one label straight as you read any wage figure: BLS has no private-school line for the occupation, so that median covers athletic trainers across all settings and owners together.
What an individual school pays is its own decision, and a school's posting or published scale is the number that counts for that job.
Career information, not legal advice — confirm current certification and licensure requirements with the Board of Certification and your state's athletic training regulatory board.