MINNEAPOLIS -- In 2014, when the Minnesota Vikings were awarded a $25,000 grant from the NFL Foundation to help establish athletic-training care at Minneapolis and St. Paul's 13 public high schools, the team quickly saw an opportunity. Vikings ownership matched the grant, creating a $50,000 fund for athletic care in the two cities' public schools. It didn't take long for the donation to have an effect.

The program helped diagnose 34 concussions in 2014. That number went up to 40 in 2015 -- not necessarily because there were more injuries, but because the schools now had the training staffs to help catch symptoms that might previously have gone undetected.

"We did see a 45 percent increase in injuries reported. There was not a 45 percent increase in injuries, but we saw that as a good thing because now the kids are reporting their injuries,” Vikings head athletic trainer Eric Sugarman said. “In the past, what we were told was that a kid would get hurt, wouldn’t be able to participate or play and you’d never see the kid again because they really weren’t receiving care. There was nowhere for them to get the help that they needed. Now, this past year, a kid becomes injured, they get evaluated, they can see a physician, they get treated by an athletic trainer, they get rehabbed and they’re back on the field helping their team."

The program has worked well enough that the Vikings' athletic training staff, along with team director of youth marketing and social responsibility Brett Taber, received the 2016 Minnesota Athletic Trainers' Associated Sports Medicine Enhancement Award over the weekend.

The program, which provided 1,300 additional hours of care in 2015 by supplying a part-time trainer to all 13 schools, will continue in the future; Sugarman said the Vikings could look to offer it at lower-income schools, where athletic trainers aren't commonplace like they are in affluent areas.

"We were able to provide coverage for preseason practices, provide an athletic trainer during the season at these schools, be able to provide an orthopedic physician on the sideline at these games,” Sugarman said. “These were all things that some of these schools never experienced. I’ll never forget the quote from the St. Paul school district that said, ‘We haven’t had an athletic trainer in 50 years at any of our games.’ That was really striking to me. Now that they’ve had two years of consistent care, hopefully they feel it’s mandatory. That’s the whole design of this program.”