Team Physician Stan Herring, “An Absolute Legend” In His Field, Retiring After Three Decades With Seahawks

To Herring’s level, it was his status as a group medical doctor for NFL and MLB teams—he also worked with the Mariners until finally stepping down from that position in recent years—that served him develop laws to make little ones safer. For all he has finished exterior of sports activities, like co-founding the Sporting activities Institute at UW Medication and serving as the co-healthcare director for orthopedic health and sporting activities medicine for UW Drugs and co-clinical director of the UW medication sporting activities concussion application, Herring’s perform in athletics and in the subject of concussion in particular that will possibly be his greatest legacy.

“In our entire world, he is an absolute legend,” claimed Seahawks VP of well being and participant functionality Sam Ramsden, who has labored with Herring considering that 1999. “An complete legend. But he is also just incredibly humble, amazingly modest. You would under no circumstances know who he talks to and who he rubs elbows with. You would under no circumstances know how perfectly-known he is. And he also just tends to make you experience like you were the only 1. You’re the most important point at the time.”

Mentioned Stricklin, “He’s been really kind of a guiding light for three a long time. He has not only held the line when it comes to client care. He is pushed the envelope with regards to participant, wellbeing and protection. He’s usually actually put that initial and he’s lived that.

“He tactics that way, and not just with our gamers but with any of his people. You can expect to listen to folks say, ‘I felt like I was the most critical particular person in the planet when I bought completed with him.’ That is just him as a authentic human. Not to mention him remaining an superb medical professional. He’s performed a lot of stuff. He modified the way that the NFL handled concussions.”

When the NFL begun using head accidents far more significantly, building a concussion protocol every group ought to adhere to, the league worked carefully with Herring, due to the fact he experienced those people protocols in place with the Seahawks prolonged prior to it grew to become the norm for the NFL.

“A large amount of the methods that ended up adopted in the earlier five to 6 years, the Seattle Seahawks have been doing for a genuinely prolonged time, and that is for the reason that of Stan,” Stricklin explained. “Which is mainly because of study. Which is due to the fact of looking at and conversations, and because this is the proper way to do this when it comes to head personal injury. He revolutionized the way that we deal with gamers with concussions, and he has championed that effort at all ranges.”

As one of the team’s longest-tenured employees, director of tools Erik Kennedy appreciates Herring as properly as just about any one in the setting up, and as anyone whose occupation lets him to establish solid associations with players, Kennedy has witnessed first hand Herring’s affect on players.

“When he arrived right here, he brought just coronary heart, care, and passion,” Kennedy claimed. “And the way he treated individuals was just phenomenal. If anybody’s interacted with Stan, he will make you really feel like you have known him. It’s just the way he treats persons. He’s classy. He is qualified. You would be hard pressed to uncover any individual who does not say some thing positive about that gentleman.”

Under Pete Carroll, the Seahawks have taken player safety incredibly seriously, from how they manage players with concussions to shifting the way players tackle—and training that system to coaches at all levels by way of tackling educational videos—but NFL teams haven’t generally taken head injuries as very seriously as a health care provider like Herring would have liked them to.

“Staying just one of the men at the reducing edge of the consciousness of it, he has been a voice,” Carroll reported. “When a lot of individuals failed to want to hear or didn’t want to hear it, he’s been shouting. I you should not know if anyone could be additional of an advocate than our football and the way we’ve completed our things. And we have often dealt with Stan and his guys, how they think and how they instruct us what we ought to realize and how we must value the urgency and in the feeling of seriousness about it, and that’s what we’ve carried out. And he’s been section of all of that, you know. It wouldn’t have been the exact same with no him.”

Herring’s passion for encouraging men and women get well from damage goes again to his days as a pupil at the University of Texas when he had a spinal injury of his very own, and from his childhood when his brother experienced what he called “seriously significant health problems and disabilities.

“I like helping people today get greater,” Herring reported. “I experienced that style for supporting individuals who were having difficulties. When I went to clinical university, right after we noticed sufferers, I might go back and get them out of mattress and exercise with them and speak to them about their daily life. I’m captivated to the field of physiatry due to the fact it’s multi-disciplinary treatment for individuals who are battling with harm or disability. You imagine of stroke or spinal cord damage or brain injuries, but it dawned on me too that folks who are capable bodied also struggle with harm. So I was captivated to the discipline and teaching as a person who took care of the most complex mind injury and backbone harm. I was capable to utilize individuals expertise to lively individuals and athletes.”

And for a lot more than 30 several years with the Seahawks, and the 49ers in advance of that, Herring has aided hold players safe and sound and maintain the video game of football safer at all degrees.

“Just one of the lovely matters about Stan is that, amount one, he would not care that it can be skilled football,” Stricklin stated. “He understands the competitive factor of it, but he cares about the affected individual. In this case, it is really the players and he’s unrelenting in his beliefs, in his integrity. There has hardly ever been a time where by I have noticed him waiver in a stance. If nearly anything, like if you can find pushback, he’ll just get more powerful in it.

“He’s unrelenting when it comes to that sort of stuff, and that is really refreshing to see. For a extensive time, we have utilised him as a ethical compass.”