In the Blue Jays dugout, Devon Travis spots Huffman speaking to a reporter, sits down beside them and listens for a moment before he interrupts the conversation. “Stop being so humble,” he says to Huffman. “You saved me.”

“I didn’t save you,” she replies with an eye roll.

Travis looks at her interviewer, shakes his head and says, “She saved me.”

Travis has spent more time than most with the Blue Jays’ training staff over the past three years as he’s recovered from multiple surgeries on his shoulder and knee. He’s worked closely with Huffman each time. This season, he’s on the verge of going wire-to-wire without an injury. “I’ll be like, ‘Nikki, thank you so much for everything you’ve done,’ and she’ll always push that aside and be like, ‘No, it’s you,’” Travis says during an interview prior to his dugout intervention. “She doesn’t want the credit for what she brings to this organization and what she’s done but I want her to be recognized because she’s great. She’s the same person every day. She shows up. She does everything for everyone in this clubhouse.

“There’s never a panic. ‘OK, you’re feeling this? Let’s try this. You didn’t like that? Well, let’s try this.’ That’s her most special attribute. There isn’t anything that is too big. If it’s not working, we’ll keep working, we’ll keep trying until it does work. That’s everything you look for in a trainer.”

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Huffman’s background as a college athlete helps in that regard. Averett was one of the few schools which would let her play while studying athletic training at the same time. A guard known for her defence, she started on the basketball team in her junior and senior seasons, twice earning selections to the USA South Conference All-Sportsmanship Team. Asked about her finest moment on the floor, she recalls how before a game against Christopher Newport University, head coach Katrina Williams pulled her aside and told her that it was her job to shut down Chelsea Schweers, who was averaging about 25 points a game. “She said, ‘Look, if we’re going to win this game, it’s going to be because of you and if we lose it, it’s going to be because of you,’” Huffman remembers. “I followed [Schweers] the whole game, full court, no matter where anyone else was. She scored seven points. We won the game and it was probably one of my prouder moments. Not because of the individual achievement, but because I rose to the occasion of what was asked.”

Having lived through such competitive experiences, Huffman feels she’s able to apply that mindset to her work as a trainer, trusting her decision-making abilities in the heat of the moment. She’s also lived through the frustration of rehabilitating an injury, having fractured her right ankle in two places during a sophomore year practice at Averett when she collided with two teammates and rolled over her foot. Now, when one of her players is coming back from an injury, she understands their desire to push as hard as possible because she did the same thing. “I wanted to run suicides, I wanted to run sprints, I wanted to do anything that could keep me on the floor and a part of what was going on,” Huffman says. “Right after I casted my leg I went to work out with the team in the weight room, staying with the team, staying involved. With our guys, I really understand that feeling of alienation when you’re injured and try to keep them feeling a part of things that are going on and the family that we are.”