Huxley, IA, physical therapist Rob Drew, here cheering on the Ballard girls’ basketball team at the girls’ state basketball tournament in March, was given the Sports Medicine Award by the Iowa High School Athletic Association.
Photo: Joe Randleman/Tri-County Times

After 15 years of mending athletes and reviving their spirits, Huxley, IA, physical therapist Rob Drew, D.P.T.’94, LAT, got his time in the spotlight in March as he was given the Iowa High School Athletic Association’s Sports Medicine Award.

Drew has been a resident of Huxley for the past 18 years. He and his wife, Amy, have one daughter, Ashley, and one son, Connor.

Drew worked at Mary Greeley Medical Center, headquartered in Ames, IA; at 21st Century Rehab out of Nevada, IA, for five years and spent one and a half years working at a nursing home before starting up Huxley Physical Therapy in August of 2002. He has served as an athletic trainer at both Ballard and North Polk high schools for over a decade – starting 15 years ago at Ballard and adding North Polk two years later.

The services Drew has provided have been invaluable according to current North Polk athletic director and former Comet football coach there, Rob Sinclair, who nominated Drew for the IHSAA award.

“More than anything, Rob has always been available,” Sinclair said. “Over the years, I have called, and he has been willing to squeeze our kids in…When finances are an issue, he has always been able to make the adjustments for families.”

Sinclair noted that Drew gets amazing results in his work rehabbing injured athletes.

“I had a football player tear an ACL during a playoff game…he had surgery and started working with Rob,” Sinclair said. “Rob set up individual workouts, and even met with him outside of the office many times to help him get through workouts. The North Polk athlete was able to get into track three and a half months after the surgery.”

Current Ballard head football coach Al Christian echoed Sinclair’s sentiments toward Drew.

“Rob has been with us since day one,” Christian said. “He has been a great trainer and friend to Ballard High School. He works his own work schedule and family schedule around helping athletes. He is active in the Ballard community in many ways and is a huge asset to us.”

Drew said he was surprised upon hearing the news that he’d been selected for the award, which he received at halftime of the Class 2A Iowa boys’ state basketball championship game in Des Moines’ Wells Fargo Arena on March 9.

“I am very honored and humbled to be recognized for something I truly enjoy: anything I can do to help athletes stay strong. That’s my job.”

“When I first got the letter, I thought it was a joke,” Drew said. “Then I had to find out who nominated me. I thank Rob [Sinclair] so much for nominating me. I am very honored and humbled to be recognized for something I truly enjoy: anything I can do to help athletes stay strong. That’s my job.”

Drew added that he likes the perks of getting to attend so many high school athletic events at Ballard and North Polk. But he stressed that he isn’t there to be a spectator.

“I look at the games a little differently,” Drew said. “I’m looking for injuries and the mechanics of injuries; like if a lineman gets hit in the knee, I have a pretty good idea of what the injury might be as I’m running out to the athlete on the field.”

Drew recently was helping a North Polk girls’ basketball player recover from an injury that cut her junior season short. He said there is no better feeling than when an athlete comes back from a devastating injury to continue his or her athletic career in high school and beyond.

“It’s very rewarding to help a young athlete go from being depressed to regaining their confidence along with their physical ability,” Drew said. “To see someone like this girl, who is just bummed, not be able to finish her junior year is tough. But she’ll be back for her senior year.”

Modified instruction in the tango, says Marnie Coutts, D.P.T.’12, can help people with Parkinson’s disease improve their gait, balance, cognition and social lives. She says it combines the “art of connection” with the “science of movement.”

Hollywood legend Rudolph Valentino and Beatrice Dominguez wowed audiences when they danced the tango in the 1921 film, “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” At the time, no one realized that the dance could ease the effects of Parkinson’s disease. Flash-forward to recent years and medical studies, including the capstone project Marnie Coutts, D.P.T.’12, took on as a student in DMU’s post-professional doctor of physical therapy (PPDPT) program: She sought to meld “the scientific expertise of the therapist and the artistic expertise of the dancer” to benefit Parkinson’s disease sufferers in community-based exercise groups. The benefit goes beyond physical movement, she notes.

“Dancing is such a social and engaging activity,” says Coutts, the PPDPT program’s 2012 Graduate of Distinction. “You’re doing a connected activity with another person.”

The capstone melded two of Coutts’ passions: She provides manual outpatient physical therapy services in two locations in Coos County, OR, and teaches ballroom dancing two evenings a week. In addition to the area’s “active ballroom dancing community,” she discovered that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a larger proportion of adults over age 65, 21.4 percent, compared to the state overall, 13.9 percent; with the increased incidence of Parkinson’s after age 60, “it is reasonable to assume we have a larger proportion of persons” with the disease, she stated in her capstone.

Coutts conducted a literature review of Parkinson’s, a debilitating, progressive neurologic disorder that typically leaves its victims with impaired strength, motor performance, hand-eye coordination, balance, gait stability, speech and cognition. While pharmacological and physical therapies exist to manage the disease, it isn’t curable.

Elements of tango – specifically, Coutts says, Argentinian-style – match those of effective physical therapy intervention for Parkinson’s patients. The walking dance includes “metered rhythms, external cues, cognitive movement strategies, large amplitude movements and close social contact – all of the recommended parameters for effective exercise” for these individuals, she concluded in her capstone.

Coutts reviewed other studies that showed the benefits of tango instruction for Parkinson’s patients. She then tested tango with a friend, a registered nurse with moderate Parkinson’s disease. Coutts and her partner and fellow dance instructor, Lynn Haller – both in the photo above – put her friend through experimental tango paces. “She was very patient with us,” Coutts says. “With her medical background, she was able to provide invaluable feedback on the exercises.”

The session also convinced Coutts they were on the right track. “When she and I were just walking around the room, the minute Lynn turned on the music, her posture improved,” she recalls.

Coutts’ capstone included an outline for a one-day pilot educational clinic for dance instructors, therapists and volunteers. Participants would take pre- and post-tests, gain knowledge on Parkinson’s disease and the tango, receive dance instruction and then practice basic tango techniques. She and Haller remodeled their dance studio to ensure its accessibility and plan to offer the clinic in the coming months.

This isn’t the first time Coutts has brought personal interests into her practice. For many years, she offered hippotherapy, an approach that uses horses to help patients experience movement and improve function. She has helped coach Special Olympics equestrian teams, now offers aquatic exercise therapy at a community pool and wants to explore using tai chi with arthritis sufferers.

“It seems like whatever recreational activity I’m involved with finds its way into my practice,” she says.

That’s one reason she loves physical therapy and the benefits it offers individuals of all abilities. “There is something sort of magical about it,” she notes.