Madison Ekas joins Fairmont State University as an Assistant Athletic Trainer after earning her Master of Science in Athletic Training from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2026.Â
During her graduate training, Ekas completed clinical rotations with Bucknell University's men's lacrosse program and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's women's soccer and men's wrestling teams. She gained extensive experience evaluating orthopedic injuries, developing individualized rehabilitation programs, providing practice and competition coverage, managing electronic medical records, conducting return-to-play testing, and assisting with pre-participation physicals. In addition, she supervised first-year athletic training students and collaborated closely with coaches, physicians, and performance staff to support student-athlete health and performance.
In addition to her clinical experience, Ekas served as a Graduate Assistant within UTC's Department of Health and Human Performance, where she created educational resources for athletic training courses, instructed graduate anatomy labs, graded undergraduate physiology courses, analyzed research data using SPSS and Microsoft Excel, and assisted with graduate program administration. Prior to graduate school, she earned her Bachelor of Science in Exercise Science from Pennsylvania Western University–Edinboro, where she also completed a performance internship with Penguins Performance Training and worked in the university's Human Performance Lab conducting physiological testing.
An active researcher, Ekas has contributed to multiple studies focusing on injury prediction, perceptual response training, and endurance performance, with her work being presented at both the National Athletic Trainers' Association (NATA) and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) conferences.
Throughout her academic career, Ekas demonstrated a strong commitment to leadership, serving as Vice President of the Graduate Athletic Training Student Association, Graduate Assistant to the MSAT Program Director, a member of the Health and Human Performance Student Advisory Committee, Founding President of the Exercise Science Club, and an Executive Board member of the Highland Ambassadors.
