Assistant Trainer Scott Touchet
Oakland Raiders assistant trainer Scott Touchet has been named the 2014 Assistant Trainer of the Year by the Pro Football Athletic Trainers Society (PFATS).
"We're working at the highest level of athletic training and people look up to that," said Touchet. "To know that your peers respect you, players respect you, coaches respect you, it feels good."
Touchet has been with the training staff since 1995, joining the Raiders after a summer internship with the Washington Redskins and a year spent with the Dallas Cowboys.
Touchet and the training staff have a variety of responsibilities, but during both the regular season and the months of the offseason, they have a singular priority. "The number one priority is always taking care of the players," he said. "If the players are here, no matter what else we're doing, we stop and take care of them. Our priorities now are rehab first of all, taking care of the players, and then there are a lot of things preparing for the next season."
In the 20 years that he has been with the organization, the landscape of athletic training has changed dramatically, but it's a change to which the training staff has adapted.
"The biggest change is just the evolving science of athletic training," Touchet said. "Taking care of players has evolved with the means we have to do it, as far as newer, more advanced modalities, like using lasers now which we didn't have 20 years ago."
As much as Touchet appreciates the acknowledgment from the PFATS, he is most proud that head athletic trainer H. Rod Martin nominated him for the award.
"The first thing that happens in this award is that [H. Rod Martin] has to nominate me, so for him to nominate me says that he appreciates the work I do and that I'm doing a good job," Touchet said. "That's the most important thing to me; the fact that he thinks I'm doing a good job."
He's been with the organization for 20 years and still enjoys coming to work every day and being a member of the Raiders organization.
"I have a home here with the Raiders," he said. "I've been fortunate to be here for 20 years. We have a great staff. The whole medical staff is a solid group. It's a long season, you go for months on end without time off, and so you have to love it if you're going to do this, but I do."
