Thanks for a Great Symposium!!

First of all, I would like to echo the post Mike had yesterday. I am going to be honest with you - with NATA being held in San Antonio, many of us were curious to see what kind of turn out we had in Arlington last week. Well, after 700 of you attended and we had the largest number of exhibitors in the 55 years of SWATA symposiums, the nervousness is gone! What a terrific week - from the kick ball game in which we all learned you don't argue with the umpires, Mr. President (see picture above), to the wonderful keynote from the courageous Kevin Everett, to the wonderful speech by our newest Hall of Famer Brian Conway and the vote on Saturday to ratify the Constitution that will govern this great organization for years to come, what more can you say??

While we are on the topic of the SWATA convention, I wanted to take a moment to address the new format you will see in next years symposium. It was briefly discussed in the Town Hall on Thursday, but after alot of discussions throughout last week, some things are somewhat set in stone for SWATA 2010. Next year in Arlington, you are going to see a new schedule when you come to SWATA. Plans are underway for the same pre-registration cocktail reception on Wednesday night to coincide with committee meetings. Programming will begin bright and early on Thursday morning culminating with the Welcome Reception that evening. On Friday, we will take a break for lunch to have our Honors and Awards banquet. Once we have celebrated the award winners at the luncheon, we will resume programming for the rest of the afternoon. Friday evening will be designated as alumni night for our wonderful athletic training staffs throughout our district to get together for some fun and fellowship. On Saturday, we will hold our business meeting and plan on wrapping up the meeting in the early afternoon. Alot of planning is yet to come, but I think this new format will be advantageous to all of our membership as well as our exhibitors.

I am excited to serve on an Executive Board that is dedicated to serving each of you and this great profession. Each of you that attended the convention should have received a link to the SWATA symposium evaluation - this is a chance for you to tell us and our convention committee what we can do to make the symposium better for each of you. If you did not receive this email, please email me at david.traylor@kellerisd.net and I will send it to you.

As always, please never hesitate to let your Executive Board what we can do for you.

DT