Photos submitted to Times Observer Sheffield’s Morgan Leichtenberger holds the national championship trophy as an athletic training student for Penn State’s DI wrestling team.

It was getting near the end of the first episode of HBO Sports College Football 24/7 – an all-access, behind-the-scenes look at Penn State University Division I football; one of the most storied college football teams in the land.

And there she was.

Popping up on 50-inch TV screens across the nation, and certainly Pennsylvania, Warren County, and Sheffield, Pa., was our very own Morgan Leichtenberger.

When last we heard from Morgan, the Sheffield High School graduate was a Kinesiology major at University Park, and a member of the Penn State gymnastics club. She said, as a freshman at Penn State, she wasn’t sure how she’d be able to do it all. But after being involved in five sports through high school, she lasted four years with the gymnastics club.

If there’s anything Leichtenberger knows about is being an athlete, so maybe it’s not totally surprising to find out she’s an athletic training student for Penn State University’s nationally-ranked football team.

Photos submitted to Times Observer Sheffield graduate Morgan Leichtenberger at Beaver Stadium as an athletic training student at Penn State University.

It’s an interesting story how Morgan has reached this point, becoming an Athletic Training major at Penn State after originally being a Kinesiology major – when she didn’t know that was possible as a college freshman.

“And being from Warren County, we never had an athletic trainer (when I was in school),” she said.

Still, mom was right!

“‘I told you so!'”, she said her mother, Amy, said of athletic training as a perfect fit for Morgan.

“I always wanted to work with athletes,” said Morgan. “If I knew, I 100 percent would have done this from the beginning!”

Photos submitted to Times Observer Look who we have here! Sheffield graduate Morgan Leichtenberger appears on HBO Sports 24/7 College Football as an athletic training student at Penn State.

Truthfully, it’s not that far a stretch – going from the goal of working in science-based physical therapy to working hands-on with athletes. There are courses in Kinesiology that transfer to the Athletic Training major. The biggest difference is the amount of observation and hands-on experience required, thus Leichtenberger is in her fifth year at Penn State University, expecting to graduate in May. And likely pursuing a master’s in Athletic Training after that.

The stretch?

If you would have told her she’d spend four years in the student section at a 100,000-plus seat stadium in one of the biggest college football cults in the land, and then find herself on the sidelines the next year, “I probably would have passed out,” she said.

It took becoming friends with an Athletic Training major her sophomore year to even be introduced to the idea of switching majors. Then, add in a pre-Athletic Training major semester, and she had to meet a strict GPA for her previous courses.

Then, remember those “observation” requirements?

After finishing 15 years as a gymnast, and four at Penn State, Leichtenberger would now become a student trainer for the Penn State Track & Field team, and later the Rugby team; one sport she knew a little about from high school, and one she knew nothing about.

“A lot of people that do Athletic Training were an athlete at some point,” said Morgan. “One of the coolest things about Athletic Training is you get to learn anything and everything about the sport.”

So there was rugby, and then Morgan worked with the Penn State national champion wrestling program.

“That year, we beat Ohio State in one of the last matches, and I was sitting closer to the mat than the wrestlers were,” she said.

Getting her picture taken with the national championship trophy was surreal, but by this point, Morgan said she was adjusting to the job; recognizing that the student-athletes she was working with on a daily basis were the same age or younger than she was.

Probably the strangest assignment was working with the gymnastics team at Penn State in the spring.

But before this school year began, football was at the top of her list and is among five undergraduate trainers below four full-time staff athletic trainers.

That includes attending practices, home and away games, and after practices and games, and hours in between.

Back from a trip to Iowa, where the sidelines are smallish at Kinnick Stadium, Morgan heard a fan yell to the players to let the “water girl” through. She said it’s one of the stigmas of being an athletic trainer – that some assume all they do is hand out water or tape ankles. That’s why she loves majoring in athletic training at Penn State, which fights that stigma and promotes its trainers.

Athletic training encompasses the prevention, examination, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of emergent, acute or chronic injuries and medical conditions. Athletic trainers are highly qualified, multi-skilled health care professionals who work as part of a collaborative inter-professional health care team.

And nowhere is this more the case that at a major Division I college football program.

“Oftentimes, you have a few moments to make a diagnosis,” she said, “or take them inside to do further evaluation.”

“I heard a pop,” could mean a lot of things.

She said Penn State University coaches are very respectful and trusting of athletic trainers and know that “when we make a decision, that it is the final decision,” she said.

She said, oftentimes because they are the same age, a particular athlete will come to the undergraduate trainer first.

“They trust me,” she said.

This is the experience and education of a lifetime, said Morgan, but her dream job? Well, professional baseball, of course.

“Still can’t believe I spent the last two weeks in Scottsdale, Ariz., interning with the Diamondbacks Sports Medicine Team!” Leichtenberger posted on Facebook in August. “I learned so much while I was there and fell even more in love with the sport of baseball. I got to work with some amazing athletes and even better staff! I’m so thankful I was given this opportunity – but now on to Penn State Football for the fall semester!”

Leichtenberger will graduate in May after taking the national board exam to become a Board Certified Athletic Trainer. She’ll pursue her masters, but might be part of another national championship before that happens.