Still a ‘gym rat’ after all these years

Heather Campbell happily admits that she grew up as a gym rat. She still is.

The daughter of legendary Casa Grande basketball coach Ed Iacopi, Campbell spent many nights as a youngster playing on the sidelines and running beneath the bleachers in the gymnasium that bears her father’s name.

Now Casa Grande’s athletic trainer and a teacher at the school, she still spends many winter evenings carrying for young Casa basketball players in the gym. Of course, she also spends many autumn evenings on the sidelines at Casa Grande football games, many afternoons behind the backstop at Casa Grande baseball and softball games, and many more afternoons and evenings caring for Casa Grande athletes in all sports.

Ironically, for the daughter of one of Casa Grande’s most famous coaches, Campbell, whose family lived on the west side of the freeway, attended and graduated from Petaluma High School.

As a youngster, she was an excellent soccer player until she blew out a knee. That injury, which eventually required three surgeries, ended her career as an athlete, but led to her profession as an athletic trainer.

“I knew I wanted to stay involved in athletics, and I wanted to help people understand more about athletic injuries,” she explains.

At the time, athletic trainers were predominantly men, but her father encouraged her to follow her dream.

“He brought me up to do whatever I wanted to do; there were no walls,” she says. She also inherited a bit of her father’s stubbornness in pursuit of a goal. “The more you tell me I can’t do something, the more I’m going to try to prove you wrong,” she says.

She pursued her goal at Santa Rosa Junior College and Sacramento State University, graduating and becoming a certified athletic trainer.

Her first job was as the head trainer at a junior college in Contra Costa County, a position that required her to commute through the heart of Richmond. After being shot at and almost carjacked, she had enough of the commute.

She took a year off to give birth to her first son, A.J. When she came back to athletic training and teaching, it was at Casa Grande.

One of her goals as a teacher was to start a sports-medicine program at the high school. “I wanted to make students aware of what was available in sports medicine,” she says.

In the 1999-2000 school year, she taught her first sports medicine class at Casa. She now teaches two or three classes a year, depending on student interest.

On a normal work day, Campbell is at school until 4:30 p.m., but for her, there is no such thing as a normal work day. She seems to be omnipresent. She is at some sort of activity almost every night. On Friday nights in the fall, she is on hand before the arrival of the junior varsity team and doesn’t leave until the last of the varsity players has had post-team treatment for bumps, bruises, sprains or something more serious.

“I love my job,” she says. “It keeps me young and it’s fun. I love feeling like I’m part of the team. The most rewarding thing is when you’re able to help an injured kid get back and play.”

The feeling is mutual with the players, who call her “Mrs. Campbell,” and carry her cell number to call whenever they need first-responder medical attention.

“I couldn’t do it without the support of my family,” Campbell says. “My husband puts up with me not being home a lot and my mother helps out with the kids.

Her husband, Tony, works for UPS, and helps coach the Casa Grande badminton teams.

The children that their grandmother, Peggy Iacopi, has helped with are 14-year-old A.J., a freshman at Casa, and 8-year-old Alex, who has inherited his brother’s job as water boy for the Casa Grande football team. Both boys are growing up as gym rats. Their mother wouldn’t want it any other way.

(Contact John Jackson at acsports@arguscourier.com)