Macon business owner serving as Team USA’s Racquetball athletic trainer at 2022 World Games

Rodger Fleming served as an athletic coach for seven a long time with the Arizona Diamondbacks business and a few many years with Tampa Bay Rays organization.

MACON, Ga (41NBC/WMGT) – The 2022 Earth Video games started Thursday, returning to the United States for the very first considering the fact that the games’ inauguration in 1981.

This calendar year, an athletic trainer from Macon will be producing sure Group USA’s Racquetball athletes are in prime shape to choose residence gold.

Rodger Fleming, an athletic trainer, massage therapist and operator of Body Consciousness General performance and Treatment in Macon, was at the Staff Usa Monitor and Area Trials for the Tokyo Olympics previous summer when a colleague presented a placement with Crew Usa Racquetball.

“My chief from there experienced achieved out and questioned me, ‘Hey, I cannot go because of to a scheduling conflict, but would you be interested in assisting out United states Racquetball? They are on the lookout for a dual credential.’ So that was for the Environment Championships in Guatemala in December of 2021,” Fleming stated.

Thanks to his outstanding get the job done at that celebration, Fleming was invited back again as an athletic coach for Workforce United states of america Racquetball, which will be competing at the 2022 Planet Online games in Birmingham, Alabama. For Fleming, it’s kind of a homecoming considering that his story with athletic education started in the southern point out.

“When I grew up in Alabama, I liked sports activities, and I played significant faculty soccer and baseball,” Fleming said. “And at 5’8″, I was naïve, and I experienced this ambition of wanting to go to university to participate in athletics. And my substantial faculty soccer coach was like, ‘Roger, no, no, but there is this new career that’s coming all-around named sports athletic education. I assume you’d be fantastic for it.’”

Fleming attended the College of Toledo and then lived the gypsy lifestyle for a number of years, paying a year as a pro basketball team’s coach, seven decades with the Arizona Diamondbacks and 3 several years with the Tampa Bay Rays. When he appeared to settle down eventually, Fleming reconnected with a earlier adore.

“What brought me in this article was I reconnected with my significant faculty sweetheart, and we dated way again, way again. I indicate, our buddies ended up Fred and Barney from the Flintstones, and then we reconnected 20 years later on. I realized that I was getting out of baseball, and I said she’s an recognized qualified. I’ll go to her, and that is genuinely how Macon has turn into my property,” he mentioned.

As soon as in Macon, Fleming served as the athletic trainer at Stratford Academy, Central Georgia Technological School and Fort Valley Condition University. Finally, one thing a cherished just one when told him transformed his point of view on his job.

“So, my grandmother, who has passed absent since, she was telling me, she’s like, ‘Roger, I know why God set you on this earth, and that’s to support individuals,’”Fleming mentioned. “And it actually started out building me assume about getting far more than just a baseball athletic coach. I wished to aid people today I guess much more of my calling. So I remaining Fort Valley, and I pursued my aspiration of owning my individual organization. And for a few yrs, I labored in a 100-sq.-foot place, and I set just about every little bit back again into the small business. And then Memorial Day weekend 2019, I opened up Body Recognition Effectiveness and Remedy.”

Fleming will not be in Macon for a while because he’s heading to Eugene, Oregon, right after the Earth Games to aid in the 2022 Planet Athletics Championships. The 1 thing he’s on the lookout forward to most is getting in a position to understand from all the other wonderful trainers that will be in attendance.