Walking in room HP 209, you might see a black dog, sitting almost sleepily in a corner of the office room. There, he awaits his master, Dr. Thomas Weidner.
Weidner is the coordinator of Ball State's athletic training program as well as director of the laboratory. However, he doesn't keep a dog as a bodyguard. He uses the dog as an escort because, amidst all his accomplishments, he is blind.
He has overcome being blind to allow his passion for athletic training to blossom into national recognition. He was recently honored with the 2003 Sayers "Bud" Miller Distinguished Educator Award. It is the highest award given to an athletic training educator. He previously won the 2003 CLATA (National Athletic Trainers' Association - District 4) Outstanding Educator Award.
Weidner has been blind since his high school days, and it was during his high school career that he learned about and picked up athletic training as a profession.
"My freshman year, I started to lose enough vision where I couldn't play sports indoors, and my true love was basketball," Weidner said. "So, to still be associated with sports, I decided to take up an invitation from my physical education teacher and the head basketball coach to be a manager for the team."
After being a manager for awhile, Weidner began to educate himself about athletic training by buying books and attending classes and workshops geared toward teaching about athletic training.
"By the time I Ieft high school, I was very self-directed and passionate about the profession," he said. "So since high school, it's been all I've ever known."
"(Awards) are an honor, but also a responsibility," he said. "By that I mean that I need to prove that they were merited. I want to model the expectations that come along with awards."
While most people would be awed by his accomplishments in light of his blindness, Weidner says it has helped him more than hurt.
"For me to accomplish what I have has taken a lot more work than a sighted person would need," Weidner said. "In the process of working hard just to be on the same playing field, I actually have been more productive because I have established this work ethic. So this work ethic has snowballed into more productivity.
"It's similar to women in the work force, to some extent to minorities in the work force," he said. "I've had to be more productive to prove I'm capable and to gain confidence. So in the process, I've almost produced even more than a lot of my sighted colleagues."
Indeed, Weidner's work ethic has helped him to accomplish a lot of things, and he hopes to continue to accomplish more in the future. While he desires to be included into the NATA hall of fame before his career ends, he wants to continue to impact people.
"In working with people, my ultimate goal is to continue to touch and shape lives both in the professional and through mentoring and being a model," he said.
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