HT’s Willard Named 2017-18 ‘Athletic Trainer of the Year’
WACO, Texas — The Red River Athletic Conference of Waco, Texas has named Heather Willard its 2017-18 Athletic Trainer of the Year. Willard serves as Huston-Tillotson University’s director of sports medicine/head athletic trainer and has been in such role for four years. In those four years, Willard has risen as a star in the conference and among HT’s and other schools’ athletes.
When Willard received the announcement,
Her colleagues are not the only group that benefits from her passion. Right here at HT, Willard focuses on the whole health of athletes in a program
“I love to teach and how athletic training lets me do that. I like to teach athletes about how the body works and where they should draw the line. I’m trying to protect and help them, and I am in the position to protect them mentally and physically. This job gives me a lot of chances to help, and I love that.”
Willard has a natural love for the body and how it heals itself. “Nothing else can repair itself,” Willard emphasized. She referenced Charles Darwin’s philosophy that “the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”
Willard’s love for the human body and HT’s athletes is shared with other schools’ athletes. Willard said that all teams do not get the opportunity to bring along their athletic trainer to games. That is when Willard steps in, and athletes from those teams come up to her and ask if
“This reinforces the family atmosphere at HT,” Willard said. She also is excited about another Ram who graduated in May 2018 who is now in the law enforcement academy. The graduate wants Willard at her academy graduation.
“The outpouring of love and support is one of many highlights of my career.”
If there were anything Willard could change in the sports medicine field,
