Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome AOSSM Vice President Eric McCarty for the presentation of this year's Robert E. Leach Award. Well, thank you. What a pleasure to be able to introduce the recipient of AOSSM's most prestigious award. It's named after Bob Leach, who was the AOSSM founding member, was the 12th president of AOSSM, the first editor-in-chief of AJSM, and this leadership award is named after him. And in the ensuing slides, you'll see why the next recipient is going to be the next recipient of the Leach Award. So this person was born and grew up in 1950s Queens, New York. The recipient was the middle of three children. All three of them are physicians. This recipient then went to the prestigious Andover High School in Massachusetts. You'll see circled in red was a runner on the track team and also played soccer. And also in high school, this person was very involved in the French club, also liked singing, and then went on to Yale, where this person, with a very scholarly look, was an English major. But it was during the time in Yale when this person had a roommate, and this roommate played on the soccer team, and this roommate got hurt, and this roommate was told that he could never play soccer again. And it was that time that our recipient knew that he had to dedicate his life to orthopedics. So from there, well, don't let me forget the singing. This person is quite the singer. He was in the glee club, and they were on Ed Sullivan's show back in those years. And so this recipient likes music, likes singing. So from there, once he decided that English wasn't going to be the way he was going to go the rest of his life, he wasn't going to be a professor at the university, decided to go to Harvard Med School, and then to HSS residency, and then did several fellowships. Spent time with John Marshall and Russ Warren at HSS, Bill Clancy, University of Wisconsin, and Wernher Muller, who, by the way, made this meeting all the way from Switzerland, and we're so thankful that he did. This recipient then, from there, had his first job, was at the University of Chicago School of Medicine, and this recipient was named the University of Chicago team physician. And since that day, remains the team physician. Here's a picture of his medical team with the first Heisman Trophy, Jay Berwinger, who played for the University of Chicago, this is 1935. And here's a picture of them with that same trophy, and also his jersey. So during the 80s, he met the love of his life. And Trish and a recipient got married in 1985. So he started his esteemed medical career at the University of Chicago and has remained there. He did a lot of amazing things, was one of the first traveling fellows in the AOSSM ESCA Traveling Fellowship, and there behind him, he's on the lower right-hand side, Wernher Muller and John Fagan, the giants of sports medicine. And then 30 years later, he was a godfather in the Traveling Fellowship. Well, during these times at the University of Chicago, he also was a special team physician diplomat. He traveled to Iran in the 1990s. He traveled to Cuba. This was with the USA Wrestling Team. They all went to the White House and were presented with Bill Clinton. He's been published and translated in multiple languages. He's the editor-in-chief of our esteemed journal, ranked the number one journal in sports medicine orthopedics. We all know who this is. Isn't it appropriate, as we go through this, that he is receiving the award of the person that he followed up on in 2001? He's got a great podcast. If you haven't listened to it, listen to it. You'll learn about all the various people and the people in sports medicine on this podcast. He does a great job. So what you don't know, and we'll go through a few slides to show you, he's got a real passion for travel. He's been a great ambassador for AOSSM all through the years, and he and Trish have been throughout the world. And he represents AOSSM and AGSM. Now you may not know that he's quite the water athlete. He's a scuba diver. He likes to surf. He likes to raft. He's also a great cook. I bet you didn't know that. I bet you didn't know that he won the award for the best day lily in Chicago. This is true. And I learned from Trish that he loved the scientific part of it, making sure that everything was just right in these flowers and growing them and cultivating them. He's also a big fan of Star Wars and Star Trek. And he loves his dog, Samson, takes Samson to work a couple days a week. And most important is his family and his faith. Did you guys hear him sing the National Anthem yesterday? Awesome. Well, he sings in church, an incredible voice. He also plays the clarinet. Sports and family, very important to him. Here he is not coaching, but he was a referee for this team that you see in front of him where his boy was playing. Loves his family. There he is with his mom and Carl when he was a little kid. Here he is with his daughter and son and their spouses. So we want to thank you, Bruce Reiter, for your outstanding leadership and contributions to the field of sports medicine. And for your leadership in AOSSM and AJSM, it is with great honor and pleasure that we present you with this year's Leach Award. Thank you. Bruce, come on up. How great is this? I get to sing the National Anthem yesterday, and now this. You know, one thing I discovered is when you sing the National Anthem, you always get a standing ovation. But as Eric said, I was a junior in college, kind of casting around for what I wanted to do. And my life crossed with a soccer player who was devastated by his knee injury. And his whole self-image was shattered. And I decided right then I was going to go to medical school and fix those knees that people were told couldn't be fixed. And I got to do that. How awesome is that? And then through the journal, I got to even have more of an impact around the world. So I feel, as Lou Gehrig said, like the luckiest guy in the world. It's just incredible. I'd certainly like to thank the AOSSM, the awesome AOSSM, for everything they've made possible during my career. I'd like to thank the presidents and the Medical Publishing Board of Trustees and the wonderful chairs that I've been so privileged to serve with, all our amazing authors and editors and editorial board members. And I'd like to thank my lovely wife. You got to see some pictures there that I didn't even know existed. I was looking at it and thinking, wow, we really look like that once? You know, we look pretty good. As I said the other night, she's had to share me with sports medicine for the last 40 years. And it hasn't always been a 50-50 split. So thank you, Trish, so much for your forbearance and support for all these years. And finally, I'd like to thank God for allowing me to reach this wonderful moment in time. Thank you so much. Welcome AOSSM Past President, Dr. Mark Miller. Thank you. It's an honor to introduce your 52nd president of AOSSM, Dr. Colonel Dean C. Taylor. So I'm Mark Miller, your immediate past president, which is the best gig on the AOSSM board. And a close friend of your new president, Dr. Dean Taylor. Now please allow me to introduce him. Can the slides catch up, please? Oh, got it. Okay. So Dean was born and grew up in the great state of Michigan. Go blue. He attended Stevenson High School, where he was a member of the cross-country team, the hockey team, and the senior chariot team. He attended college at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, and graduated second in his class. Note that he did spend one semester at the United States Air Force Academy here in the state. Dean was accepted directly into medical school at Duke University, which he considered his true undergraduate social experience. I would have showed a picture of him during medical school, but apparently he so rarely attended classes that we didn't have one available. While a medical student at Duke, Dean met his lovely Anne Humphrey, now Anne Taylor. Ironically, his co-medical student that he was dating at the time, his girlfriend, introduced them to each other, noting that Anne is going to make someone a great wife someday. Dean graduated from Duke Medical School, and the Army sent him to Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center here in Denver, where he completed his surgical internship, and yet he still had time to play golf on the course that surrounded the hospital at the time. Next up, a year as a general medical officer at Munson Hospital in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. No, this wasn't named after Thurman or Herman. Reportedly, the movie The Longest Yard was based on Dean's experience as team physician at Fort Leavenworth. Dean married his better half in 1987 at their home in Rhode Island, and they've been BFFs for 40 years. He was invited back to Duke to complete his orthopedic residency in 1987. Dean and Anne's first child, Kate, was born near the end of his residency. The ever-funny Bill Garrett named her the Star Wars baby. May the force be with her. Dean was selected to the Army Joint and Soft Tissue Fellowship. This crazy name was invented to get the brass to go along with creating a sports fellowship in 1991, and he spent a year at his research at Letterman Army Medical Center in San Francisco and a clinical year at West Point. After his fellowship, he was picked as an AOSSM traveling fellow, and he was thrilled that his mentor, Dr. Frank Bassett, was chosen as his godfather. He then spent two years as a sports medicine physician at Eisenhower Army Medical Center, where he also volunteered to work the Masters Golf Tournament. Dean and Anne's son, Ben, was named after that year's Master Champion, Ben Crenshaw, and he was born in 1995. Dean was asked to return to West Point as an attending surgeon. Dr. John Fagan has described the Service Academy sports jobs as the ideal fellowship in the world. He took care of multiple teams at the Military Academy. Here he is performing his version of the horse whisperer. He had many close friends and colleagues at West Point, where he served as chief, fellowship director, and head team physician. But alas, all good things must come to an end. He retired from active duty in 2005 as a full colonel and recipient of the Legion of Merit Award, one of the highest medals given in peacetime. He spent a year at the University of Minnesota until warmer weather and a chance to return to his alma mater intervened. He excelled as a Duke faculty member and fellowship director. He was Duke's team physician for a variety of sports, but his favorite was basketball. Well, it is Duke after all. He tried his hand as a coach himself, but I think even he will admit that Coach K is a hard act to follow. There were plenty of mentors available at Duke, and Dean took full advantage of their leadership skills. He also had plenty of mentors outside of Duke as well. He was one of the youngest godfathers in AOSS in history and led his group on the first ever SLARD tour. There were plenty of challenges to navigate along that tour. He is truly an international surgeon. In fact, some would say that he operated more at away games than home games. Perhaps no one had as much influence on Dean as his super mentor, Dr. John Fagan. Dean honored Fagan's legacy with both the Magellan Society and the Duke-Fagan Leadership Program. The West Point Fellowship was also renamed after Fagan. And although Dean had many great ideas, occasionally Fagan himself may have had some concerns. Dean's lasting legacy at Duke will likely be the Fagan Leadership Program. This is the gold standard for developing future leaders in medicine, and he's brought many of that here to the AOSSim. He also founded the Magellan Society, which brings together former sports medicine traveling fellows from literally around the world. You don't get to be AOSSM president by being a slacker. It's a merit-based promotion, and Dean has served the society well. Dean, known for his clever acronyms, developed the BOLD program for the AOSSM emerging leaders. Did you know that he also came up with the acronyms for SANE and the SPAT Lab, Spherical Projectile Accuracy Testing, which requires 18 outside testing stations? Dean has also introduced the AOSSM Emerging Leaders Nightcap Series. Perhaps he took it a little too seriously. Dean also served various other organizations responsible for bringing AOSSM and Anna to a more harmonious relationship. He's received numerous awards from AOSSM and other organizations. Well that sounds like a lot of work. Does Dean do anything fun? That would be a rousing affirmative. Dean is the unofficial social chairman of the fraternity that he never got to be a member of in college. He took on this very seriously, and as he has all of his assignments. I'm not sure what this is all about, but it sure looks like fun. Other fun activities? Boating? Not something you would expect a West Pointer to enjoy. Fly fishing? Sometimes you didn't even need a rod. Hiking? Check out these hiking shoes. Not West Point issue. Here's Dean literally climbing out of a hole and atop humpback rock. Check out these sunglasses. I'm not sure this is Dean's forte, but I think they were demonstrating the American version of football to their slurred hosts. Apparently Dean also had aspirations to be a train engineer, but that didn't work out so well. Besides Ann, golf is one of Dean's true passions, and I've been lucky enough to join him at the SPAT lab on several occasions. One of the things about being a former service academy team physician is to poke fun at your other service academies. By the way, Air Force is still atop the commander-in-chief's trophy competition. I look forward to have Dean join us as the AOSM past president. And so without further delay, please join me in welcoming your 52nd president, Dr. Colonel Dean C. Taylor. I pulled into Nazareth, what's the feelin' about that brass band? I just need some place where I can lay my head. Hey mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed? He just grinned and shook my hand, and that's all he said. Take a load off, Annie. Take a load for free. Take a load off, Annie. And you can put the load right on me. I picked up my bag, I went... Wow! That was fun. Well, maybe not all of those pictures, Mark. Where'd you get those? That's not fair. But thanks, Mark. Thanks for those kind words, and thanks to the orthopedic legends for walking up with me, my heroes. That was awesome. That was awesome. Sports medicine is awesome. Bruce Ryder said it. And leading sports medicine is awesome. And leading sports medicine is A-O-S-S-M. It's what we do. Leading sports medicine is awesome. A little nod to Mark Miller and Bruce Ryder. How do you spell awesome? A-O-S-S-M. Sports medicine is awesome. Now, after Mark's introduction, it may come as little surprise to you that what I want to talk today about is leadership and leading and leading in sports medicine. My history of leadership education goes back 47 years to when I arrived at West Point, and they shaved off all my hair. And then it continued for another 28 years in the Army. And I was constantly learning about leadership. When we arrived back at Duke, I felt like we could innovate education in sports medicine. I had just read Jim Collins' book, Good to Great. And what Jim Collins found was that great companies figured out what they could do better than anybody else in the world and tenaciously stuck to that expertise, what he called the hedgehog principle. I had an idea. I thought that at Duke, we could do leadership education better than anywhere else in the country. So we started to do leadership education as part of our sports medicine fellowship. And then it expanded. The incubator and catalyst for much of this leadership education has been the Fagan Leadership Program, what Mark talked about earlier. We named it in honor of my mentor and a true selfless leader in sports medicine and in life, John Fagan. We started with the first Fagan Leadership Forum in 2009, bringing together leaders from diverse fields to share their ideas on leadership education. Our 15th Fagan Leadership Forum looked at leading in our polarized world. World class speakers shared their ideas and attendees left with an idea of how they could be better leaders in today's world by using things like building relationships, listening, what a quaint idea, listening to understand others' points of view, and seek to find common ground. More on this later. The other part of the Fagan Leadership Program is the Fagan Scholars Program. And this is the real engine of the program. Every year, we have more scholars apply, and they're amazing, to our program than we can take. And we take 30 scholars from that selected group of applicants, and they are in an in-depth leadership development experience for nine months. At the end of it, they present their work at the forum, and the growth that we see in the scholars is phenomenal. What they get from the program, they also give back to health care. And just an example of some of their contributions. One Fagan Scholars team created a proposal for a leadership program for the entire School of Medicine that the school liked so much that they adopted, and it's now in its 10th year. Another scholars team wanted to share how patients think about their medical care, and they took patient stories and they published a book on it. Several scholars teams worked together to figure out what the best leadership education model was in health care, and they found that there wasn't one. So they continued their work, did the research, and figured out that the core principle of patient centeredness and the competencies of emotional intelligence, teamwork, critical thinking, integrity, and selfless service are necessary for effective ethical leadership in health care. One of those competencies is teamwork, and I'm going to talk a lot about teamwork today. But first, I'm going to take a little diversion because the biggest emotion I'm feeling right now after walking up the aisle after this week is gratitude. It's gratitude. So there's a lot of people I want to thank. Now, I have to warn you, I can't thank everybody, but there's a lot of photos that are going to be coming your way. If you pay close attention, you'll probably see yourself. I first want to thank our presidential line, Chris Kading, Eric McCarty, Mark Miller, Kurt Spindler. You guys are amazing. Thank you for all that you do. Thank you. It's come a long way from your younger days. Past presidents, thank you for your support. Thank you for your wise counsel, your teamwork with the AOSSM is priceless. I want to thank both boards, the AOSSM board and our board of publishing. Your tireless efforts make the AOSSM better for all of us. Our professional team is amazing, led by Greg Dummer and Christina Tomaso. They carry out the vision of the volunteer leadership, and they do it exceptionally. This meeting has been incredible, and the program committee, led by Allison Toth, have gone above and beyond what I ever expected. Allison and John are perfectionists, and they have done an amazing job. Not only have they done a great job, but they've done a great job of making the AOSSM a better place to be. Allison and John are perfectionists, and they have done an amazing job, not only with the program committee this week, but special ed day, and taking education and programming at the AOSSM to another level. Allison, John, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I want to thank all of you, because all of us collectively, we make up a great team in sports medicine. I also want to mention some other teammates, my home team, those that can't be here, and those that can. And I also want to mention some of the people that have helped me throughout my career, and I'm going to start with my military brethren, who taught me how to take care of patients, and how to be a patient-centered leader, beginning with Ricky Wilkerson and Walt Curl, my first two mentors in medicine and orthopedics, and continuing through my fellowship directors, Bob Arciero and Jack Ryan, and then all my partners and other colleagues in the military, too numerous to name. I can't even get all their pictures in here. Thank you. A special thank you to all our fellows, those at West Point and those at Duke. You taught us as much as we taught you. Thank you. I'm blessed to be part of a special team of teams at Duke. From my clinic teams and OR teams, that's Halloween in the middle, by the way, to our amazing athletic medicine teams, to my teammates on the faculty of Duke Sports Medicine, led by my other orthopedic brother, Ned Amendola. You guys are phenomenal. To my mentors, from John Fagan, Frank Bassett, Leonard Goldner, Bill Garrett, Jim Urbanik, and many others, to our professional educational teams. These folks are the ones that are teaching the leadership lessons. And a special shout out to Stacey Rarick, who keeps it all together. And I want to mention two teammates who are here today. Where are you, Scott? Joe? Joe Doty is the executive director of the Fagan Leadership Program. And Scott Gibson runs our clinical teams as a physician's assistant extraordinaire. Thank you for all that you do for our patients. And thank you for all that you do to make leadership in medicine better. Now, I mentioned those that can't be here. I wouldn't be here, obviously, if it weren't for my parents. My father, Don, died in 2006. But my mom is still going strong at 91 years of age back in Michigan and unfortunately couldn't be here. My brother, Dwayne, and his wife, Tammy, and their family can't be here. Nor can my sister, Diane, who passed in 2020. And my brother-in-law, Dennis Lisk. But I appreciate all that they have done for me. And those that can be here, my sister, Donna, and her husband, Mike Corsell, thank you for your passion and your love. My daughter, Kate, who was here but had to leave. She's the most famous person in our family. And she's getting an award in Los Angeles for one of her documentaries. She'll be back tomorrow. You don't want to miss her. She's brilliant. She's loyal. And I thank her for her love. I'm thrilled that my son, Ben, and his wife, April, can be here today. They are remarkable human beings. And they're taking time out of their busy lives where they're tackling the challenges of opioid addiction and also the challenges at Google. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your remarkable intelligence, your support, and your love. Now, the responsibility of leadership can be somewhat overwhelming at times. It can be a real burden. One of the ways to lessen that burden is through good partners. Well, I happen to be fortunate to have the best partner in the world, Ann. Ann is a remarkable leader in her own right. She's been with me all the way. Thanks for sticking with me all the way. You're an amazing partner, mother, leader. I love you. Now, let's get back to sports medicine. Sports medicine is hard. We have long days in the OR, challenging cases, insurance issues. We just heard about the legal issues that are out there, EMRs, taking care of emergencies on the field in front of nationally televised audiences. Sports medicine is hard. It's really hard. Well, if it's so hard, how can I say it's awesome? Who knows the movie A League of Their Own? There's a few of you out there. What's the most famous line from A League of Your Own? There's no crying in baseball. Sir, sir, there's no crying in baseball. Well, my other orthopedic brother, Bob Arciero, he may agree that's the most famous line. But he would argue that the best line is a different line. And I would agree with him. When Gina Davis, Dottie, is leaving the team, she says, you know, Jimmy, it just got too hard. And Tom Hanks turns around and he says, it's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everybody would be doing it. The hard is what makes it great. The hard is what makes it great. It's what makes sports medicine so great. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. We are so blessed. But at times, the hard gets ridiculous. AOSSM is here to help make the good hard great and get rid of the ridiculous. And what we've done this year is try to lead sports medicine to get rid of the ridiculous and make the good hard great. How have we done that? We've done that by leading collaboratively, by leading discovery, by leading learning, and by leading for the future. I'm going to dive deep into these a little bit, beginning with leading collaboratively. So for the next two hours, I'm going to tell you all about the great things that are happening in sports medicine. Really, seriously, that's ridiculous. I'm getting rid of the ridiculous. So what I'm going to do instead is I'm going to share with you the real wow moments and the amazing things that are just touching the surface of all the things that we're doing. Our focus is on leading collaboratively. And I want to share a lot of these wow moments. I want to share how we are impacting the initiatives, the programs, the accomplishments in sports medicine. And we're doing it collaboratively, collaboratively, and collectively with our partners, both in North America and around the world. We are doing it with our industry partners. We're better together when we're innovating and moving sports medicine forward. One of the greatest examples of leading collaboratively is the sports medicine program. As Mark pointed out, in the Valles de Cannes restaurant in 1985, John Fagan and Werner Mueller on the back of a napkin sketched out the outlines of an international exchange between ESC and AOSSM. And although that napkin has been lost, the sports medicine fellowship continues and has included Latin America through SLARD and Asia-Pacific through APCAS. In 1993, I was fortunate enough, as Mark mentioned, to be selected as a traveling fellow. We learned from our hosts from across Asia in the Pacific region, and we learned from each other. My godfather, Frank Bassett, my co-traveling fellows, Carol Tights and David Martin. I was so influenced by all of them that I thought we needed a reason to keep this going. So Frank Bassett had us for a day of break on Bali. And on that beach in Bali, I had another light bulb moment. We should have a way to come together. The alumni of the Sports Medicine Traveling Fellows should come together, and we should have our own organization. So in concert with our hosts, our traveling fellowship group, and other traveling fellowship alumni, including Nick Friedrich and others who are here in the audience today, we started the Magellan Society in 1995 with our first meeting in Stockholm in Helsinki. And now, almost 30 years later, here in Denver, we welcome the latest traveling fellows. Zhao, Tim, Michael, and Kanto, please stand up. Welcome to Denver and the AOSSM annual meeting, and welcome to the Magellans. I said there'd be a lot of wow moments. Well, here's the first. All the way from Basel, Switzerland, two people have come here to honor all of us. Nick Friedrich, Werner Mueller, would you please stand so that we can honor you for all your leadership in sports medicine? Thank you. Nick, Werner, thank you. Isn't this fun? I mean, this is so much fun. I mean, I could do this for hours, but I'm not going to. This is so much fun. I'm having such a good time up here. I hope you guys are, too. I don't see anybody sleeping, so that's good. All right, so how about another wow moment? Our leading collaboratively is recognized throughout the world, so much so that at the ESCA meeting in Milan this year, AOSSM won the MVP award, the Most Valuable Partner Society award. All of us were recognized, and I was honored to accept the award on behalf of all of you. It was a great moment. Now, there's no better example of leading collaboratively than this annual meeting. We are partnering with our partner societies. We are partnering in collaborations on research, collaborations on education. And a great example of that was yesterday in our collaboration with the J. Robert Gladden Orthopedic Society on the game changer, the unequal playing field. The Gladden and AOSS team, along with special guest speaker, Billy McMullen, brought us new ideas and new understanding of the problems of racism and challenges in working with and treating underrepresented populations. It's something that's so important, and we came away with a better understanding and a challenge to do better, and we're going to do better. Probably the thing, the collaboration that's been closest to my heart, though, this year is our collaboration with the Arthroscopy Association of North America and AOSSM. Now, many might be of the opinion that over the last 42 years that the ANA-AOSSM relationship was somewhat polarized. I think I'd agree, but learning from the Fagan Leadership Program and others and taking some of those lessons from the Fagan Leadership Program, like building on existing relationships with the presidential line, listening to understand and finding common ground, our similarities are much greater than our differences. We've come to better alignment and less polarization between our two organizations. For example, one of the things that we've partnered on is an agreement on fellowships. We both agree that we have a role in fellowship education. The AOSSM's role is on administration and communication about the fellowships. ANA's role is on the expertise in teaching arthroscopy, and we recognize that. We recognize that we do it together, so much so that this year, fellows received a certificate, a certificate, one certificate from both organizations signed by both presidents. And in addition, we've created two task forces, one on looking at how we assess arthroscopic skills in education, and another on how we work together organizationally and financially as we become more aligned. And breaking news, breaking news. I'm very honored to announce for the first time that the presidential lines have agreed to have a joint specialty day at the academy meeting with ANA and AOSSM beginning in 2026. This is huge. I want to thank the ANA leadership team, and I especially want to thank two people that are here today, JT Tokish, John Kelly. Would you please stand so we can thank you for your collaborative leadership? Thank you, guys. Aren't those great pictures? Love it. Now, I've been talking about leading collaboratively, but really, all our leadership initiatives this year blend together and complement each other, and there's no better example of collaborative leading discovery than the MAS program, which is a collaboration between SOMOS, ANA, and AOSSM. In November, at the first MAS summit, we awarded Andy Sheehan with the first MAS grant, and the grant applications were so good that we felt like we had to award another one. And breaking news again, we've done that not only with the three original collaborators, but we've brought the academy in. Patrick Mescher, congratulations on your MAS award. Another collaboration that's been great is the Return to Play grant. This is a partnership with the Gladden Society, the Forum, the Aircast Foundation, and Arthrex. And this just in, the winner of the inaugural Return to Play grant is Christian Latterman. Congratulations, Christian. Okay, so what about leading learning? Well, there's probably no better venue where we're looking at how collaboration and discovery and learning are coming together than our annual meeting. Now Mark mentioned I was an intern at Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center. I began my life as a doctor here in Denver, and so for me, it's very special to be back here in Denver for the annual meeting. Fitzsimmons is, it was an amazing place back then. It was a big place. Now it's dwarfed by the rest of the development on the University of Colorado Medical Center campus. At this annual meeting, we are leading discovery. At this annual meeting, we're leading learning, both on the tactical side and on the interpersonal side. Those leadership lessons, how we interact and influence our fellow humans for the betterment of our patients. Those soft skills, some people would call them soft skills, I think they're the hardest skills to learn, are what we're emphasizing in addition to the technical education here at this meeting this year. Our program is getting to those hard-to-learn interpersonal skills because, everybody, the hard is what makes it great, and we're trying to help you get there. It's a combination between the technical side and the interpersonal side. We are bringing programming that's patient-centered, that emphasizes learning the skills of emotional intelligence, teamwork, critical thinking, integrity, and service. I already mentioned the unequal playing field in our partnership with the Gladden Society. We're also bringing some of the world's greatest leaders here. Tomorrow, I look forward to introducing you to one of them. My West Point classmate, Bob Brown, who played basketball for Coach K and then went on to become a four-star general and commander of over 100,000 troops in the Pacific and retired and is now the CEO of the Association of the United States Army with its 1.3 million members. Bob is one of the world's great leaders. Bob, thanks for being here, and we look forward to having a conversation tomorrow. It's going to be fun. We also have a presidential guest speaker who's going to focus on teamwork, Tiki Barber. He, along with the New York Giants sports medicine team, led by team physician Scott Rodeo and head athletic trainer Ronnie Barnes, are going to be prodded and poked and questioned by Allison Toth as moderator in what's going to be very entertaining and very enlightening. I'm thrilled that Allison's moderating it. I'm thrilled even more so that we have one of the world's great human beings on our stage and Ronnie Barnes, and I'm thrilled that our presidential guest speaker, Tiki Barber, agreed to do this as a team because that's what we are. We're a team, and doing it as a team is going to be even better. We also have another elite athlete in Nina O'Brien. She's going to share her story of a horrendous injury that she sustained at the Beijing Olympics, and she's also going to partner with a team that includes her surgeon, Tom Hackett, and John Finoff, who's the chief medical officer for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. Okay, so that's the annual meeting. We're doing the great technical side. Everybody's been to the field house. We're doing amazing stuff here. We've got the non-technical, human-to-human side. Well, we're not just about the annual meeting. We've got great education elsewhere, including the National Hockey League Summit, led by three Stanley Cup playoff team physicians. This August meeting is going to be phenomenal. They're going to look at things like youth hockey. They're going to look at the rise of women's hockey. They're going to look at DEI in hockey. They're going to look at all aspects of the world's greatest sport, ice hockey. I can't wait for it. We also have a surgical skills course. It is a tremendous collaboration. This is also an example of leading education, leading learning, and leading collaboratively. In conjunction with the OLC, Omecra, and SLARD, this surgical skills course is going to bring an innovative, multilingual approach to the surgical issues in complex shoulder surgery. There are going to be live surgical demonstrations from the OLC in Rosemont, from Mexico, and from Columbia. Now, more breaking news. We're announcing here, for the first time, our state-of-the-art, innovative team physician modular series. Let's take a look. Welcome to an entirely new learning experience from AOSSM, guided by leading team physicians and subject matter experts, designed for your whole sports medicine team across all stages of their careers. This on-demand series covers vital topics, from injury prevention to sideline care, ensuring you're prepared to deliver high-quality, holistic care to every athlete, every time. Welcome to convenient, dynamic education tailored to how you want to learn. Welcome to an all-new team physician education series. Stay tuned for more developments. Check out the AOSSM website. This thing is going to be amazing. Now, I would be remiss if I'm talking about collaborative leading of discovery and learning if I didn't mention our AOSSM family of journals. Our publishing team is going above and beyond to provide the latest and greatest in sports medicine research and education. We've already heard about the wonderful leadership of Bruce Ryder from Eric's Leach Award presentation, and I'd like to add my own personal congratulations. Bruce has been a leader in the AOSSM from his time on the first traveling fellowship to ESCA as a researcher, as an educator, as a tremendous editor. You guys jumped the gun there a little bit. Wes, hold off a second. Hold off. Allison Topp is going to be on you guys after this. You shouldn't have done that. More than these, I really want to thank Bruce and Trish for your friendship with me and Ann over the years. You, Bruce, are a treasure to all of us, and I want to thank you. I want to thank you, Bruce and Trish, from the bottom of our hearts. Let's hear it for Bruce and Trish one more time. The good news is, everything's going to be all right. Bruce is going to stay on as the editor of OJSM, and he's going to continue to do his great podcast series, Easy Broader. Bruce, thanks again. The future of publishing is really bright, and really, the future is bright. Speaking of leading for the future and tying all of our leadership initiatives together, just like my harmonies with Bob Marley in our walk-up song, where all our leadership initiatives complement each other, we're going to talk how leading for the future is also leading learning, leading discovery, and leading collaboratively. This, to me, is probably the most impactful program I'm going to tell you about today, and that's the Building Orthopedic Leaders Development Program. This program came out of Michael Ciccotti's Emerging Leaders Initiative, and then developed by the emerging, by the early career members committee chairs, Megan Bishop and Carolyn Hetrick, along with Jenny Ramian from our professional team. They worked in concert with Jodi Glickman and her team of professional educators at Great on the Job to create a program for our early career members. It's a two-year program, and I met with the BOLD Playmakers this week. Their growth so far has been phenomenal. It's amazing. And as a side note, one of the aspects of the BOLD program is the mentorship program, and this started out of Mark Miller's efforts last year to create a mentorship program. It's being marshaled by John Kelly and Keith Kenter in the early career members committee, and it's pairing senior leaders with early career surgeons. I would encourage all of you, whether you want to be a mentee or a mentor, to reach out to the membership team at AOSSM. It's a phenomenal opportunity. I've had a wonderful relationship with my mentee, Adam Tagliero, from the Mayo Clinic, who's not here because he's a new father. I'm really looking forward to Nashville next year for so many reasons, but one of the big reasons is I want to see the BOLD Playmakers present what they've done and really see their growth over this past two years. It's going to be an exciting time. Now, AOSSM is leading for the future. I said that. Not just for our society, but for sports medicine in general, the entire field. Our expertise in sports medicine is recognized through subspecialty certification, or SSC. This is administered through the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery, and it's important because those in healthcare organizations, in public policy, medical legal teams, as you heard about in the Keep Your Briefs On session, athletic teams at all levels, athletic conferences at all levels, they look for subspecialty certification to designate that you're an expert in your field. Well, the hurdle to get there is that you have to take an SSC exam a year after passing part two of your boards, the oral boards, so you may not even get your subspecialty certification until three or four years out of fellowship. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. If David Martin was here right now, I'd punch him in the face. But we don't have to do that because there's better leadership to that, and guess what? We're getting rid of the ridiculous. Chris Kading, a true leader, isn't going to punch him in the face. He's working with Dave Martin to change, to change. Now the subspecialty certification beginning next year will be administered at the end of fellowship year. Taking that exam means that once you pass part two of your boards, not only are you going to be board certified in orthopedic surgery, all you early career members, you're going to be board certified and subspecialty certified. This is a tremendous, a tremendous achievement. Thank you, Chris, and thank you, Dave Martin. Now, Chris, this is the kind of leadership that we need at AOSSM, and I am glad as our next president that you are going to be coming in and providing that leadership for all of us, and all of us are with you. We're on your team to help you as you lead sports medicine. We are excited to have you and Christine take over the reins from me and Anne. Chris, Christine, would you join me and Anne on the stage for the ceremonial exchange of pin and exchange of the medallion? And while they're coming up, I just want to close with a few thoughts. I'm really excited for the future. I think the best is yet to come. This has been an honor of a lifetime, and I really can't adequately express in words my gratitude for all of you, my gratitude for this opportunity, my gratitude to God for putting me in this place at this point in time to be with all of you. I have no words left except for a big thank you and a few words by the Grateful Dead. Thank you all very much. Thank you, Jerry. Thank you, Jerry. Anne, would you please pin the AOSSM pin? Oh, you're just going to hand it to her? Okay, to Christine. Chris, congratulations on becoming the 53rd president of the AOSSM. I know you're going to do a fabulous job, and we're with you all the way, buddy. Thank you, Dean. Thanks. That concludes this ceremony. Thank you all again. Look forward to celebrating with you the rest of the week and learning with you and come to the Wings Over the Rockies tomorrow. It's going to be a big bash, and I'm really looking forward to partying then. Well done. Outstanding.

Eric C. McCarty, MD

Bruce Reider, MD

Dean C. Taylor, MD

Christopher C. Kaeding, MD

AOSSM

award ceremony

Robert E. Leach Award

Bruce Reider

Eric McCarty

Dean C. Taylor

Mark Miller

sports medicine

leadership

mentorship