How does a man who worked all over the world come to find his joy at an all-boys private high school in Creve Coeur, Missouri? This man is Mr. Scott Kugler, Chaminade’s athletic trainer, but many just know him as “Scott.”
Scott is a man of many backgrounds in his career. Scott graduated from the University of Missouri in 2002. While he was at the University of Missouri, he switched career paths from physical therapy to athletic training as he was inspired by one of his friends to pursue this career. After this, he had an internship with the Arizona Cardinals in 2003.
After his internship with the Cardinals, he was hired by the New York Jets and worked for them from 2005 to 2007.
One of Scott’s favorite stories from his job with the Jets was a game at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He called the field a “frozen tundra” and said many players’ hands were frozen before the game started.
In January 2007, Scott would go across the pond to Germany for NFL Europe. Scott has many stories about NFL Europe, but one stands out. In one of the games, their star running back sustained a hit to the head, and was asking the same questions repeatedly: “Where am I?.. What’s the score?.. Where are my shoes?”
After NFL Europe, Scott came to Chaminade in the 2007-08 school year. He wanted to be closer to family after being away for nine months. When he arrived, he planned to stay for only a few years but ended up deciding to stay much longer.
Scott told me that his time at Chaminade was “the most rewarding” in his career.
One of the reasons he says this is because he gets to watch his students do “extraordinary” things.
Head basketball coach Frank Bennett (’01) works with Scott on almost a daily basis, and here’s what he had to say about Scott: “He’s a selfless man and a gem to the Chaminade community.”
In addition to this, we can now talk about Scott in the classroom. Scott teaches Anatomy 430 in MS 3. I interviewed one of his students, Ethan Joyce (’24), about taking Scott’s class. Ethan said about Scott, “Scott is a great teacher and will answer any of your questions.”
I also talked to him about whether or not the average student should take Scott’s class; he had to say, “Scott’s class isn’t for the average student. I would take this class if you want to do something in pre-med in college. He also makes it easy to understand lessons by connecting them to sports.”
Scott means a lot to the Chaminade community because not many schools have athletic trainers, and if they do they are not as knowledgeable or dedicated a trainer as Scott is to Chaminade.
