Al Proctor, PhD, a longtime consultant on the NCMS Sports Medicine Committee, will be inducted along with six other members into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame’s 2011 class at a ceremony on May 12 in Raleigh. Dr. Proctor has spent more than 50 years actively involved at virtually every level of athletics, either as a trainer or advocating for adequate care for North Carolina student athletes. He was North Carolina’s first nationally certified high school athletic trainer when he worked at his alma mater, Greensboro Senior High School (now Grimsley), from 1958-62, after three years as a student trainer at Wake Forest University. He served as assistant trainer for the New York Yankees from 1960 to 1961.

In most of the last 50 years, Dr. Proctor has worked to raise the level of professionalism among sports trainers. He established the first student trainer clinic in the nation, awarded scholarships to teach young trainers the craft, directed the state’s first sports medicine program and worked to make sure every high school in the state was staffed by a skilled trainer. He played a key role in the certification process for trainers, in the state and nationally, and more recently made a successful push for the presence of teachers certified in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation in the state. He is the founder and director of the NC Sports Medicine Foundation.