By Mike Mulhern  

JOURNAL REPORTER

PHOENIX--When Richard Petty took a hard hit, which he did often in his 30-plus years in a NASCAR stock car, and his body was hurting but duty called, crew chief Dale Inman would pull a jar of horse liniment off the shelf, give the King a rubdown, and push him back into the cockpit.

Today, when the walls seem to get harder every season and swift recovery has become increasingly important, more and more drivers are turning to sports trainers. Taking time off to heal isn't usually an option for Winston Cup drivers.

So when Dale Earnhardt or Ken Schrader absolutely, positively must get back into their race cars, they can call on Beckie Kern, the newest sports trainer on the circuit, to pound some relief into painfully sore muscles.

Kern has become a fixture in the NASCAR garage, a certified trauma therapist whose primary business is running a holistic therapy center in Indianapolis about 15 minutes from Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Her weekend job on the Winston Cup tour now eats into much of her routine.

She started the massage therapy program at Indy's Methodist Hospital in 1994. Now she works in private practice associated with Methodist and St. Francis and other hospitals in that city, helping with everyone from crash victims to transplant patients, even neonatal patients and premature babies.

Kern is no Dale Inman when it comes to taking an air wrench around the front of a stock car on pit road to change a tire, or going nose-to-nose with Bill France on a point or two, or when it comes to telling a superstar driver he needs to shut up and drive. But when some of the top names in the business hit the wall at Daytona, Talladega or Darlington a little too hard, she's the one who gets the call to slap them back into shape.

Slathering on arnica gel or some other homeopathic remedy might not sound medically high-tech, but Earnhardt's been a believer since Kern first helped bandage him up after his debilitating Talladega crash in the summer of '96 . . . well enough to make it to the starting line at Indianapolis the next week and to win the pole at Watkins Glen the week after.

She has been on weekend retainer ever since, busy enough now to plan to move her Indianapolis business to North Carolina.

''What most people don't realize is that this is a violent sport even before you hit the wall,'' she said, standing on call in the back of Richard Childress' hauler. ''You do not have to be in an accident to experience trauma as a race-car driver. Just pulling the belts tight (can do it). ''Or just going through the corner at Talladega you get really bounced around, and backs and tailbones and arms are hurting. Or at Martinsville you're tapping on that brake for three-and-a-half hours, and your left foot is hovering so your left leg gets sore.

''Even the jaw can hurt, if a driver doesn't realize he's clenching his jaw.

''Bristol is a tough track on drivers, not just because their bodies are working hard but also because it's a long day. All the night races are difficult for that reason, that they're fatiguing to begin with.'' 

Kern says she's worked with professional athletes from all playing fields, and NASCAR drivers experience just as many traumatic injuries.

''I've worked with professional football players, professional baseball players, hockey players, college players,'' she said. 

''And these race drivers are athletes that experience a lot of trauma, too. I haven't seen anything on a race-car driver that hasn't been injured. All kinds of weird things can happen.

''And these injuries are not something you can fix overnight. Trauma can take years to work on. I'm still working on people now who were in car accidents five years ago, with their whiplash or broken ribs or whatever.''

KERN'S CALLING CARD came from Dr. Terry Trammell, a noted Indy-car doctor who has made his own name repairing damaged drivers from his base at Indianapolis Methodist. When Earnhardt asked for a recommendation for a physical therapist to help him through that difficult summer of '96, Kern was the name he got. 

''Dale was looking for someone to help him with the pain he was going through,'' she said. ''He talked to the infield hospital people at Indy, and Dr. Trammell and some of the people at the hospital. I've done work with some of Trammell's orthopedic patients.''

Trauma relief is her specialty, and Winston Cup drivers, after a hard couple of days in a race car, particularly at a bruising place such as Talladega, are eager patients.

Since 1992, Kern has been running The Indiana Holistic Center in Indianapolis, with about 700 patients. 

Moving her practice to North Carolina is next on her agenda, ''because I would like to concentrate on the NASCAR community, and do something with local hospitals in North Carolina like I have in Indiana. 

''Obviously, not being in North Carolina I can't do a lot of post-race stuff unless I fly back with one of the drivers, like Darrell, to work on his hands or something.''

Published: November 4, 1999