When the Gridiron Dawgs took the field this summer for pre-season practice sessions in preparations for the upcoming 2011 season, there was a new student trainer on the sidelines, but she isnt an unfamiliar face to the local squad, to say the least.

Carley Miller certainly isnt new to the sidelines, being the daughter of Clinton County High School head football coach Jamie Miller and his wife, Trisha Bowlin Miller.

Carley, 13, attended her first collegiate football game at an early age of just 11 days old, and since that time has missed only a hand full of games that her dad has been involved in – both as a coach and a fan.

But her duties as a student trainer will be new for Carley, as she just recently earned her certification as a Student Athletic Trainer.

Carley will be joining the Bulldogs on the sidelines this season as a student trainer, and while she will be seen by most fans dealing with injuries on the field and sideline treatments, a great deal of her duties will be before the players even take the field on game days, during practice sessions and in pre-game preparations.

She earned her certification from two separate camps this summer, the first being the Student Athletic Training camp at Bethel University in McKenzie, Tennessee in June, and this month she completed studies at the University of Kentucky Student Athletic Training Camp in Lexington, Kentucky.

While attending these two training camps, she learned a host of skills including taping techniques that are used to treat injuries as well as methods of taping that are designed to prevent injuries and specialty taping techniques as well.

In addition, she received training in a host of other areas such as care for heat illness, sports nutrition, injury evaluation, rehabilitation techniques, anatomy and injuries including those involving the ankle, foot, elbow, wrist, forearm, hand, knee and shoulder.

Other areas of training she received during her certifications included stretching techniques, splinting techniques, treatment for possible concussions, hydration recommendations for players, wound care and physicals.

Her training also means that she is now CPR and first aid certified, as well as being certified in the use of automated external defibrillators (AED).

An eighth grade student this fall at Clinton County Middle School, Carley is the first Certified Student Athletic Trainer Clinton County has had, and she was the youngest to receive the training from the University of Kentucky.

She plans to attend the U.K. camp every year to advance her knowledge of the sports training field each season.

While her first love is for football, Carleys second passion is playing volleyball, and she manages to juggle her duties with the two fall sports and her involvement with both.

Her mother, Trisha, told the Clinton County News this week that Carley has also long shown an interest in medicine, often accompanying her mother on medical field related trips in connection with her job which involves interacting with Emergency Room physicians across the United States.

Of course she was raised on the football field with her daddy, so medicine and football just go hand in hand, Trisha Miller said. We never had a summer baby sitter for Carley, Jamie took her with him everyday to football, so she has only known football in the summer and fall.

Comparing Carley to the character from the football movie Remember the Titans, her mother said that Carley often could be seen on the sidelines with her dad and alongside team members during practice, fussing about the players not running the plays being called from the sidelines, or not working as hard as they should or not making the big plays.

Like her dad the coach, her criticisms simply translate into her desire for the team to always give their best and to win.

One of Jamie Millers favorite stories to tell about his daughter and her first trip to watch the Tennessee Titans playing when she was just four years old, involves Carleys insistence that it was time to bring out the special team at one point during the game – a call that apparently surprised some other nearby fans.

When she was four years old at her first Tennessee Titans game, she yelled its time to bring out the special teams and two men sitting behind us asked how old she was and how she knew about special teams,Jamie Miller fondly remembers. Carley thought they were correcting her and so she looked at them and said okay, bring out the punting team then.

Miller said the two fans were surprised at his young daughters knowledge of the game when the punting team took the field.

Noting that student trainers are a vital part of the sports medicine field in all high school sports,Coach Miller said that he was proud to have his daughter working alongside him on the Clinton County High School football team sidelines.

More importantly, Im proud to have her skills and dedication to the Clinton County Football Team,Miller said.

Carley says she hopes local fans take the time to learn more about the game of football and eventually come to become the fan of the sport that she has grown up watching.

If people would take the time to learn the game, they would love it,she said.