Editor's Note: Emily Fortunato worked as an assistant athletic trainer at George Mason University from 2013-15 and also served as a graduate assistant from 2007-09 while earning her master's degree in exercise, fitness and health promotion. She also was a part of the sports medicine staff with the Washington Mystics before accepting her current role as head athletic trainer for Utah Royals FC. This summer, Fortunato served on the athletic training staff for the U.S. Women's National Team during the squad's run to the World Cup title. In her full-time job in Utah, she works closely with USWNT members Kelly O'Hara, Christen Press and Becky Sauerbrunn. Fortunato sat down with GoMason.com recently to discuss the thrill of working with the USWNT and how Mason preparded her for her career in professional sports medicine. 

How did you first get involved with U.S. Soccer?
After I graduated from Mason, I took a job in a clinic that had outreach to the Washington Spirit, and they let me do coverage for it. I stuck around and kept my foot in the door that way. Then back in 2012, the NWSL was formed and the National Team was split up as it is now. We had Ali Krieger and Ashlyn Harris on that team and they had put in a good word with their current athletic trainer for the National Team. He asked me into a camp in September 2013, and I've just been in and out of camps for almost six years now.

So how did you end up getting the call up? Was it just because of hard work?
Yeah. I think the players had some say as to what staff they wanted to go along with them and I was very fortunate to stay on and put in the work over the years. I've gotten to know most of them just from working with them in the league and in National Team camp. So I did a January camp with the full team and after that it was "how do we get Emily into the World Cup and how do we make this work." I think the players had a big hand in it, but forming relationships with administrators and staff over the years helped me a lot.

What were your specific duties at the World Cup?
I was one of four athletic trainers. There was one full time athletic trainer and three people like me which they call "network professionals" who come in and help out around the camp and rotate from camp to camp. So I was one of four. There were also three massage therapists and everyday, probably three or four times a day, we had training room hours and whatever players needed they'd come in and we'd help them. That included stretching, rehab, assessment, treatment, getting ready for practice and taking care of them after practice. We were there pretty much from breakfast until 11 P.M. to help them get ready for practices and games.

What're some of your best memories from the trip?
It's great to see 23 players coming together to accomplish this mission. But we had 20-something staff members and seven to nine medical people coming together to just really grind out two months to accomplish a goal as well. Looking back at that, it's fun to reminisce about what went into it, like getting three hours of sleep and loading the truck to move to the next city at 7 A.M., or having one player go down with a little nagging injury and still being able to get 23 players available for the World Cup Final. I think that's something every athletic trainer would take joy in, but I think the memory of grinding for two months and then coming out victorious was just the greatest feeling."

So, Megan [Rapinoe] and Rose [Lavelle] had some nagging injuries. Did you guys take pride in the fact that they were able to go out and perform at such a high level in the final?
You take pride in it, but it's really just what we're there for. We work before and after training and games. That's what we were there to do and we all put our heads together and threw everything we could at it. Our job is to have 23 available players every game and when you do that, you are able to put the best team out there. You give your team the best chance to win. We were all pretty pumped we had those 23 players available and obviously Megan and Rose were huge contributors.

So obviously you were training a lot, did the team together or did you have any time to explore France? Or were you just completely on the grind the whole time?
We had a few hours occasionally to explore France and actually some of our training was in the evening since the games were so late. So we could have a few hours in the morning if I got up early enough to walk around. Some days you just want to sleep. I remember one time, it was our first night in Paris, we closed shop at 10:30 P.M. and we all just on a whim said "let's go to Paris right now" since a bunch of us had never been. We walked around Paris at night when everything was lit up and the Eiffel Tower was lit up. It was so cool to experience that. Then when we were in Lyon for a few extra days, we had the opportunity to wander around. It was awesome.

Many of us here back on the mainland were in awe of the team's confidence and their ability to take the world level of pressure and just absorb it and just thrive in it. That's easy for us to do from a long way away, but what's it feel like to be front and center and watch maybe one of the best performances in the history of United States' athletics firsthand?
It's funny, because I was talking to Becky [Sauerbrunn] one day and she asked me "How's your World Cup?" I remember saying, "It doesn't feel like a World Cup until you get to the games" because we're in such a bubble over there. I turned on the TV maybe four times the entire trip and it was in French. My Twitter wouldn't load and you're just constantly in a bubble working. It feels like business as usual and then you get to a game and you realize "Holy cow we're at a World Cup, look at all of this." So you really have tunnel vision and everyone knows we've been training for this, some of us for our whole lives. You know that this team is expected to win and they definitely take that with pride and they know that they have a big target on their back. They just want to win. They're elite athletes so you don't really need to motivate them, they want to show what they can do. We didn't necessarily hear all of the press and the craziness at home. We're in a bubble and we just focus on our mission.

For the players that are in Utah with you, is this just another bond in your relationship? It's clearly something you will always have together.
For sure. I think we'll always have 2019 and that's special. I've known a lot of these players now for a few years and you always have those inside jokes and those memories. It's just something we'll always have forever and I'll probably be able to text or call one of them in a few years and mention something from 2019 after they probably go to [the Cup in] 2023 or whatever the next one is. We'll have those 2019 memories forever. Even with my med-staff team, that's something that we did, and we did it together and all of us had some role in putting that fourth star on that shirt. That will be there forever.

How do you think your time at Mason helped you prepare for this really big step in your career?
I learned so much about work ethic and having a team-first approach at Mason. I was on my own with women's basketball and I learned to work autonomously while also realizing I worked with so many experts in our field. So just because I was responsible for women's basketball doesn't mean I couldn't talk to Bekah [Schmidt] or Debi [Corbatto] or Linda [Pullen] or any other trainers about a case that I had that I was having trouble with or about getting a physician involved. You definitely have that team approach at Mason. It teaches you teamwork, because now I'm one of seven and probably at the time I was one of seven at Mason. it was very familiar to work together with everyone to accomplish the same goal. We want to help our athletes to be healthy and we want the coach to have the best available team to play."