Moriah Gross, left, takes a selfie with Britney Gato, Patrick Dunagan and Jennifer Craig in the backstage area at Rock the South. Gross, Gato and Craig all work for Below Chiropractic, which provided massages for those with access to the VIP area. Dunagan, who is Gato’s boyfriend, helped with set-up.
HANCEVILLE – When Moriah Gross and Britney Gato graduated from Wallace State Community College and entered the workforce as licensed massage therapists, they never imagined that would lead them to an event like Rock the South.
Gross and Gato are two of four Wallace State Therapeutic Massage graduates who had the opportunity to work at the two-day music festival, providing massages to event staff and entertainers in the VIP section of the venue. Both women work as massage therapists at Below Chiropractic and Wellness. Deanna Hays and Lyndsey Bates are the other two WSCC Therapeutic Massage graduates that worked the festival.
Gross, 25, said Below Chiropractic’s Doctor Jeffrey Cole knows the event organizers and helped arrange for massage therapists to be on site for the event staff and the entertainers as thank you for their hard work. Gato, 26, said the tent in which they set up their massage chairs was located to one side of the stage, between it and the area where entertainers parked their buses.
While none of the big-name entertainers who performed at the festival took advantage of the massages, many of their band members and event staff did as a way to ease sore muscles of setting up stages and equipment. Anyone who had VIP passes to the back stage area could have a massage.
“We were pretty busy,” said Gato. “Every now and then we would get a slow spot where we could kind of watch and listen to the bands.” She said they gave massages to a lot of the band members, including those from Thomas Rhett’s band and Florida Georgia Line band members.
“We did have a few people who came back several times,” Gato said. “They were like can we have more than one massage, and we’re like, yeah, of course you can.”
The girls did spot a few of the celebrities as they moved around behind the stage and Gross had a photo made with Rhett, one of the country music artists who performed at the festival.
“The RVs were parked right across form our tent, and that’s how we saw Thomas Rhett, who was just throwing a football with his dad,” Gross said. Rhett’s father, Rhett Akins, is also a country music singer and songwriter popular in the mid-1990s. “I didn’t know who he was, he was just throwing a football with him, but whenever he performed Friday night he introduced and said this is my dad.”
“It was a fun experience,” Gato said of working her first Rock the South. “It was just like any other concert,” added Gross, who worked it for the second year for Below Chiropractic and Wellness. They closed their tent up at 9 p.m., each night and were able to enjoy the rest of the concert with the crowds.
Both women said when they graduated from Wallace State’s Therapeutic Massage program they never thought they would get to meet celebrities or work at an event like Rock the South.
Gross said fate had a hand in her becoming a massage therapist. She first wanted to enter the Physical Therapist Assistant program at Wallace State, one of the more selective programs, that usually has more than 100 applicants for about 30 available spots. She was encouraged to enter the Therapeutic Massage program, which is good alternative to earn a certificate with credits that can be applied later to the PTA program.
“I ended up falling in love with it,” Gross said of the career. “It’s kind of funny how it worked out. I love it. I love helping people.”
For Gato, becoming a licensed massage therapist is part of her plans to eventually open up a business with her mother, who is a diagnostic medical sonographer. “Our goal is to do prenatal and infant care,” she said. “She loves to do the 3-D and 4-D sonograms, so we were thinking of things that went with pregnancy and infancy, and I’ve always loved stuff like this, so I just went for it.”
Gross and Gato are both complimentary of the Wallace State Therapeutic Massage program and instructor Babs Herfurth.
“Babs is an amazing teacher and I would recommend her to anybody,” Gato said. “She definitely prepared us,” Gross added.
Applications for Fall 2016 entry into the Therapeutic Massage program are still being accepted. Contact Herfurth at 256-352-8425 or babs.herfurth@wallacestate.edu or Valetta Baker at 256-352-8307 or valetta.baker@wallacestate.edu.
Registration for Fall 2016 is underway, with classes starting on Wednesday, Aug. 17. Visit www.wallacestate.edu/current-schedule to see the complete list of fall classes. For more information, visit www.wallacestate.edu or call 256-352-8000.
