Second-year Griffin High athletic trainer Mitch Duncan is undertaking an ambitious program designed to help the Bears play better this season.

Well, at least get better quicker $250 at a time.

His plan is to collect funds and donations to build a supply of knee braces, so when a player goes down with a knee injury they can immediately have a brace available to aid in their rehabilitation.

"When I started working as a trainer I worked with a junior college and they had braces in stock," said Duncan, who was working at Georgia Military College at the time. "When a person got hurt, we'd pull a brace out and stick it on them."

"It was nice and orderly," he said. "You didn't have to work around insurance companies, getting the player measured and getting it ordered — all of that stuff — and it helped with rehabilitation time."

Duncan was in the process of starting such a program while working at Vidalia High School.

"A friend and I talked about getting braces with the old high school I worked at, but then I left," said Duncan, who was then hired as Griffin High's athletic trainer. "But it always stayed in the back of my mind that it would be nice if you could stick a quality knee brace on a knee right away."

Duncan had to watch his greatest fears play out in real time last season when eventual Bears' Golden Helmet Award winner Eddrick Johnson went down with a knee injury in the third game of the season and he had to miss a week because it took time to get him in a brace.

"If we'd have had a brace, he'd have been back that week," said Duncan. "But he ended up missing a game — a game we ended up losing — because we couldn't protect his knee properly."

Although there are more than just knee braces available for trainers to use, Duncan said the program he is starting would focus on knee braces to begin with.

"What we want to do is have a pair of each size in stock, and there are five sizes," he said. "Eventually, later on, we'd like to also have one for every lineman."

A $250 donation will make a brace immediately available for a fallen Bear and get your name or businesses name on a banner displayed at all home football, basketball, baseball and soccer games, said Duncan.

To learn more, contact Duncan at or phone Bears head coach Steve DeVoursney during school hours at (770) 229-3752.