When the words “dynasty” and “Rio Rancho High School” are bandied about together, several Rams teams come to min for many: the volleyball team, which has won five state titles and been to the last seven state championship matches; the wrestling team, which has a handful of titles and repeated as state champs in February; and the school’s lesser-known hockey team, which has been to four state championship games in a row and won the last three.

But the team fewer people think of that’s had even more success, as in seven state championships, is athletic trainer Melissa Loaicono’s sports medicine team. They’re student trainers n they’re the kids who run onto the soccer pitch, the basketball court, the baseball diamond, etc., to determine the extent of an athlete’s injuries. They’re limited in their scope of treatment; Loiacono, former RRHS student and current assistant trainer Vanessa Cordero or Mid-High trainer Karen Cawthon is never far away.

Loiacono’s sports med teams won six titles, from 2000-05, failed to finish first in 2006, and then resumed its winning ways last spring. “Miss L,” as the kids call her, is taking two four-person teams to Alamogordo High School this week for Sunday’s state sports medicine competition. The event includes a 100-quesiton multiple-choice test, an oral practice exam and the “trainer Olympics,” in which student trainers evaluate injuries and react, as it taping a sprained ankle.

Along for the ride — for the final time — is senior Kendra Kornrumph, who Loiacono thinks could not only help the Rams nab the top prize but also emerge as individual champion.

“She should be able to hold her won (at state),” Loiacono said of Kornrumph. “She should do really well.”

And that’s not going out on a limb (pardon the pun). Kornrupmh was with the Rams’ championship team last year and finished second in the individual competition.

Medicine, in a way, runs in the Kornrumph family.

Her mother has worked in a hospital and her father, Bill, recently retired as the city’s deputy fire chief. Two half-brothers are firefighters in Indiana, and her sister Shianne, a 2003 RRHS graduate, participated in sports medicine.

Another brother, Brad, played football and wrestled for the Rams. He graduated in 2006 and is now a Rio Rancho firefighter.

“I like to help others. It gives me a chance to be one-on-one with athletes,” she said recently, after checking on the rehabilitation efforts of senior Rian Rodriguez, missing track practice because of some nagging shin splints.

A former dancer, Kornrumph said she likes to not only watch athletes compete but also “watch the athletes progress through their injuries.”

And that she does, recalling Wayne Martin’s torn ACL in the fall of 2006 and watching him heal in time to play football and run track this spring.

Next year, already with some concurrent college credits earned at CNM as a senior, she hopes to attend Northern Arizona University or the University of New Mexico to get a start on being an orthopedic surgeon.

She has spent part of the winter and spring “shadowing” the New Mexico Scorpions team acupuncturist. And she watches “E.R.” and says “Discovery Health channel is always on my TV.”

Kornrumph said being on the sports med team isn’t that different from being on athletic teams. They have fun together, study together, often work together at athletic events, and are obviously pretty good students with sunny futures ahead.

Of course, Loiacono likes her teams’ (she’s send two four-student teams) chances this weekend at AHS.

The Rams’ teams, to be decided upon Wednesday by Loiacono, include Victoria Chaplin, Jordan Lowry, Tyler Romero, James Bostian, Kelsey Garcia, Victoria Southard, Lauren Cubbage and Kornrumph.