A Healthy Change For Schools New Part-time Trainers Are Hard At Work In The Public League.

Don Russell, a senior on the football team, had twisted his ankle. Field hockey player Sara Kaplan was complaining of a pulled groin. Tight end Darion Shuford, who has asthma, was making his way slowly across the practice field, panting, in a desperate search for an inhaler.

When athletic trainer Keith Purino arrived on the practice fields behind Washington High School one afternoon, athletes of all sorts came running.

Purino is one of the part-time athletic trainers hired by the Philadelphia School District last year to make the rounds at the city's 33 public high schools. They try to prevent common athletic injuries and make sure those that occur are treated properly.

Russell was worried that he would miss a big game just two days away. He wanted to be seen.

"I want to play 'cause it's my senior year," said the husky-voiced guard and defensive end, who was sprawled on the field, frowning.

His coach, Ron Cohen, was worried, too.

"His ankle's pretty sore," Purino told Cohen.

"I'd like to have him in the game Friday," Cohen replied. Then he joked, ''Amputation would do it."

Purino was firm. He arranged for an X-ray and an appointment with a Temple sports-medicine doctor for the next day. They would have to wait and see.

He told Kaplan how to stretch out the soreness in her legs, suggested that she sit out the practice, made her promise to ice the aches when she got home.

When he encountered Shuford on the football field, he got him to stop for a minute, sit down, and concentrate on regulating his breath. He sent another player off in search of the inhaler.

Each time Purino looked up from tending to one athlete, half a dozen more were hovering, waiting for him. Some just wanted attention, but some obviously needed help.

A pulled arch in a player's foot. A swollen knee. Shinsplints. Nausea.

And Washington was only Purino's first stop of the day.

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Before afternoon practices are over, Purino will visit two more schools and minister to a dozen more young athletes.

In all, Purino, 25, who is close to receiving a master's degree in sports medicine from Temple, is responsible for five schools: Washington, Northeast, Lincoln, Frankford and Olney.

Temple University Orthopedics and Sports Medicine provides one other trainer to the Public League. Allied Sports Medicine Professionals Inc. furnishes five more assigned to specific schools, as well as three floaters. Each trainer has at least three schools to visit, some as many as six.