Wojecki and Medina award winners announced

I would like to take this opportunity to announce two more deserving award winners that will be recognized this summer at the SWATA Annual Meeting awards luncheon.

The Eddie Wojecki award has been given annually since 1968 and is very special award in that it is voted on by you the member. This award is given to an athletic trainer who has made outstanding contributions to the Southwest Athletic Trainers' Association within the past two years. The nominee's for this award are selected by a committee of the three previous Wojecki Award recipients'. This year's winner as selected by you the member is Mike Pruitt. Mike dedicated over two decades to the SWATA Scholarship committee in addition to his other volunteer activities such as his work with the 3 day breast cancer walk.

The Frank Medina Award is a prestigious award that is given annually to an athletic trainer who has made significant contributions throughout their career to the athletic training profession. The recipient of this award is selected by a three member committee, comprised of the three previous Medina Award recipients. This year's recipient is Bucky Taylor. Throughout his career Bucky has been involved with many different aspects of association leadership. He served on the SWATA Executive Board and was president in 2002-2003. Currently he is the chair of the corporate sponsorship program.

Congratulations to Mike, Bucky, and all other SWATA award winners.

SWATA Election Results

The polling for the 2010 SWATA election is closed. The ballots have been counted and I wanted to let you know the results of this year's election. Before I give you the winners I want to thank each of you who voted for taking part in the association. We are only as good as the people who participate in the association and the easiest way to get involved/participate is to vote. This year we had an all time high number of voters as 439 of you voted. The electronic ballot has been a hit and as we move forward we will almost certainly continue to use this method because of the ease of use.

Without further delay here are your newly elected SWATA Executive Board members are:

SWATA Vice President - Mitzi Laughlin

SWATA Secretary - Lorna Strong

SWATA Arkansas State Rep - Ken Cole

Congratulations to all three new board members. I am confident that under their leadership our association will continue to grow and better meet the needs of the membership.

Finally you may notice that the new SWATA Secretary is Lorna Strong and Lorna is our current parliamentarian. Because of that the SWATA EB has appointed a new parliamentarian and that will be Natalie Steadman of Texas Tech University.