Sartell Woman Serves International Athletes in Spain [GALLERY]

SARTELL -- A central Minnesota chiropractor took the journey of a lifetime earlier this month.

Dr. Sara Cuperus, who runs Chiropractic Performance Center in Sartell, spent nearly a week in Tortosa, Spain on a care team for the CSIT World Sports Games.

She says she is honored to have been one of twenty specialists from around the world selected by the International Federation of Sports Chiropractic.

I'm just a small town kid from Minnesota. I think there's always these people we look up to who travel and get to do multi-sport games and things like that and we go wow that's really awesome it'd be great to do someday, but how would that really actually happen?

The care team included people from France, Poland, Denmark, Germany, the UK, and the U.S. Cuperus was one of six women on the team and one of three Minnesotans.

While there, they worked with 3,500 athletes from Austria, Mexico, Belarus, Portugal, Spain, Croatia, Iran, and Cuba. Cuperus says one of the biggest challenges came down to language barriers.

When there's a language barrier you figure it out with either sign language or pointing or actions. That sort of thing.

Cuperus, who has been practicing for 16 years, says she was intrigued by how chiropractic culture differs between countries.

There are countries where chiropractic is not well known at all and not very many people know what they do. So coming back to my practice this week was just like whoa - I feel pretty lucky.

She has previously served on similar teams for the U.S. Olympic Training Center and hopes to have another trip to the international stage in the future.

So the hope is certainly to do more. The next World Games, which is a little step above this, is in 2021 and will actually be in Alabama. It will be in the U.S. this next time, so I would love to work that.

The sports medicine team was responsible for triaging injuries, creating game plans, providing treatment to enable ongoing performance when needed, and transporting athletes to the hospital.