Students hoping to enter the sports medicine field get hands-on training, as conversations surround the recovery of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin. This comes following his collapse during a game against the Bengals in Cincinnati on Monday Night Football.

When it comes to sports medicine, learning from a textbook isn’t enough.

“This isn't stuff you can learn on the job," CEO and program director of Sports Medicine Concepts Mike Cendoma said. "This is stuff that day one, you graduate and a week later you're on the sideline of a football game or basketball game. You need to know how to do this stuff that day."

That’s what brought Connor Englert and other students of Alfred University to the Sports Medicine Concepts facility in Avon on Friday for a variety of training simulations.

“I have a specific passion for sports and medicine at the same time," senior Connor Englert said. "So I figured, why not combine the both? And this is the perfect profession to do that."

This was shortly after the Bills safety Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest on the field during a game.

"I was texting some of my A.T. classmates, ‘what did you think of this hit? What do you think happened?’" Englert said. "And then what would we have done, running through that simulation as well? So it was very relieving that he's alive, but also educating. Because you can see how professionals do it."

Following the incident, these sideline heroes have been thrust into the national spotlight.

“In the sports medicine world, it's not terribly uncommon,” Cendoma said. “We're prepared for these kinds of things, and that's what's on display here - is the type of preparation that those medical teams go through." 

Cendoma says Hamlin's survival depended on the intense preparation and training the NFL has in place.

“The chance of them surviving was very low, but the chance of them surviving was actually impacted by the preparation that team went through," Cendoma said. "They knew what to do, when to do it, and they had rehearsed it so many times that it was second nature to them."

It’s a lesson he hopes is imparted to students.

“Like a lot of first responders, we're shadow workers, until darkness comes the light," Englert said. "But I'm just happy everybody's prepared and everybody's ready to go."