NATA Hall of Fame

Rod Walters, a former NATA board member, has served as a product development consultant for Nike, Riddell, 3M Healthcare and United Pacific. He also has worked with Donjoy to successfully launch the Velocity, an off-the-shelf rigid ankle brace. He was an assistant athletic director at the University of South Carolina until 2007, when he launched his own consulting business.

As a college athlete, Tony Marek found his calling when injury sent him to Gary Craner's athletic training room. Naturally inclined to fix things, Marek took up the profession, eventually spending 13 years as head athletic trainer at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is in private practice and spends his weekends caring for professional bull riders. Marek was a two-term member of the NATA board.

Kathleen Laquale was the first female athletic trainer at Providence College and is half of the first father-daughter duo to work in athletic training. She also is a licensed dietary nutritionist. Laquale's work strongly influences her students at Bridgewater State College, where has been associate professor and the program director of the undergraduate and graduate curriculum programs.

Pete Carlon is a valued voice for the profession among college sports administration. Now the director of athletics at the University of Texas at Arlington, he has focused on integrity and leadership, serving on the NCAA Competitive Safeguards Committee, NCAA drug testing committee and the NATA board.

Jerry Bell helped develop the athletic training education program at the University of Illinois. He was instrumental in securing state regulation of athletic trainers in 1985 and licensure in 1995. Now a professor emeritus for the University of Illinois, Bell has 80+ presentations and 45 publications to his name, and he has traveled the world with the U.S. Swimming Sports Medicine Society.

Clint Thompson's focus has been on professional development. He was editor of the Journal of Athletic Training from 1972-85 and associate editor until 2003. His 31 years of Journal work was recognized by the creation of the annual Clint Thompson Award for Clinical Advancement. Now retired, he was the head athletic trainer at Northeast Missouri State University from 1985-2001.

Sue Stanley-Green was the first woman to cover football full-time in the Southeast Conference, as associate head athletic trainer at the University of Kentucky. Currently, she is program director of the athletic training education program at Florida Southern College. She served on the NATA board and was a two-time director on the Board of Certification.

Kathy Schniedwind's career was spent at Illinois State University, where she worked from 1976-2006. She was the first female athletic trainer at Illinois State and the first female board member for the state association. Schniedwind served on the NATA Foundation board and the Foundation Scholarship Committee; now retired, she still lectures and is a sought-after mentor.

Charles Redmond, who served two terms on the NATA board, is a proponent of clinical education and worldwide sports medicine, having lectured in Aruba, Ireland and China while caring for athletes at the college, professional and Olympic levels. He is dean of the School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation at Springfield College, where he has worked more than 30 years.

1934-2001

Ted Quedenfeld, while working at Temple University, developed the first hospital-based sports medicine center and the first clinic-based outreach program for high school athletes in the U.S., creating jobs for athletic trainers outside the traditional setting. Quedenfeld also contributed significantly to secure Pennsylvania's first state legislative act for athletic trainers in the early 1980s.