Smith will begin his new position on July 1 and Handling will begin on Sept. 1. Joan Couch, associate head athletic trainer who previously had responsibilities on both the academic and athletics side, will take over full-time athletic training responsibilities and assistant athletic trainers Dan Watson and Courtney Butterworth will remain in their current roles. A fifth full-time athletic trainer will be added in the near future to replace Handling.
Smith, who joined the UD staff as an assistant athletic trainer in 2001-02, will take over the lead role and will direct athletic training efforts with the Fightin' Blue Hens football team after assisting Handling with that team for the past four seasons. Watson will expand his athlete responsibilities as Smith's assistant with the football team for the first time this fall.
Smith becomes just the fourth person to hold the title of head athletic trainer since the 1940s. Gus Seaburg served as UD's first athletic trainer during the early 1940s, Dr. C. Roy Rylander served from 1946-88 and Handling had served since 1988.
Handling, 61, who earned his first degree from Delaware in 1970 and a second in physical therapy in 1980, recently completed his 36th year with the nationally recognized UD athletic training program. He joined the staff full-time as an assistant to Rylander in 1972-73 and served in that role until 1988 when Rylander retired. Handling has worked as an athletic trainer on the sidelines for every Delaware football game since the 1972 season, a streak of 438 straight games.
Handling, who was honored in June with the Ted Quedenfield Award for outstanding athletic training service in the greater Philadelphia area, is a member of National Athletic Trainer Association (NATA), the Delaware Athletic Trainers Association (DATA), the American Physical Therapy Association, the Delaware Physical Therapy Association, and the College Athletic Trainers Society.
He is a past president of the DATA, is a member of both the Delaware Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame and the Delaware Special Olympics Hall of Fame, and served as the director of the UD Athletic Training Education Program from 1988-2002.
Handling was the recipient of the Governor's Outstanding Volunteer Award for the State of Delaware in 1999 and in 1992, he was honored as the Outstanding Faculty Member in the UD Department of Health and Exercise Sciences. He has also served as head trainer for eight Delaware Blue-Gold All-Star Games, which feature the top high school seniors in the state.
Smith, 42, will begin his eighth year with the UD athletic training staff this fall after previously serving as a full-time athletic trainer at Vanderbilt University (1989-95) and Penn State University (1995-2001). He served as coordinator of the Vanderbilt University Sports Medicine Student Athletic Training Program and at Penn State worked with the nationally ranked women's volleyball, men's basketball and baseball squads.
A native of Philadelphia, he earned his bachelor's degree in human development in 1988 from Penn State University and his master's degree in physical education from West Virginia University in 1989. A member of the NATA, Eastern Athletic Trainers Association, and DATA, Smith worked for three years as a student athletic trainer at Penn State. He began his career as a graduate assistant trainer at West Virginia University in 1988-89.
He has worked extensively with several UD athletics team and previously served as the head athletic trainer for the Blue Hen women's basketball team. His wife, Beth, is an associate professor in the College of Health Sciences at Delaware.
For more information on UD athletics, see [www.udel.edu/sportsinfo].
