Pilgrim unveils new training gym and rehabilitation center

Pilgrim unveiled its new strength training gym and rehabilitation center on Tuesday, with several fall athletes on hand to take instruction from a plethora of trainers from Warwick’s Northeast Sports Training.

From now going forward, trainers from NEST will be at the school regularly, assisting athletes in the new facilities with training, rehabilitation, dynamic warm-ups and more. Having these resources available all the time should not only help results on the field, but assist in preventing injuries and quicken the healing time of already-sustained injuries.

“This is designed to protect our athletes, as well as to provide strength training, speed and agility training,” Warwick athletic director Ken Rix said. “This will be great for injury prevention. The people over at NEST are experts in preventing injury, and that’s our main goal.”

One of the teams in the gym was the varsity girls’ soccer team, which was going through a series of dynamic warm-up exercises with one of the NEST trainers.

“For us, we’re going to utilize it as much as possible as far as the training end of it, the therapy end of it and just keeping our players safe,” Pilgrim girls’ soccer head coach Tom Flanders said. “This is something that has been a long time coming and something that the athletes deserve. I love that Warwick is making such an investment in its athletes and students.”

Student-athletes won’t be the only ones benefiting from these new facilities, either, as all students will get to use the new gym area for physical education classes throughout the upcoming school year. Additionally, the nutritionist from NEST that will be working with the athletes will also be speaking to the classes on a regular basis.

“The best thing is that this will be used for the Phys. Ed. classes, too, so it’s not just for the athletes,” Rix said. “The athletes will certainly benefit a lot from it, but the entire student body will, too.”

NEST founder and strength and conditioning coach Michael Macchioni is equally happy for he and his staff to have the opportunity to work with the students over at Pilgrim.

“This is long overdue,” Macchioni said. “Obviously, with sports there are a lot of injuries associated with them, and not all schools are fortunate enough to have athletic trainers and licensed rehab professionals there. We’ll be in here on a daily basis doing injury prevention stuff. It’s a great initiative and we’re glad to be here.”