It has been 10 years since Jeff Stone was appointed as the Athletic Trainer of Suffolk University.

The work he has done at Suffolk has been incredible. Having one man taking care of 13 teams is an overwhelming and very demanding task that Stone has completed in a very professional way.

In his time at Suffolk, Stone who is known around campus as Stony, has earned many major honors, including being inducted in the National Athletic Trainer Association Hall of Fame which he describes as “a really humbling honor.” Only 27 people from New England have been honored with this selection in the 50-year history of the National Hall of Fame.

This year Stone celebrates his 10 successful years that all started when his longtime friend Jim Nelson hired “Stony.”

“I knew him when he was coaching basketball for Suffolk and I was working at Framingham State back in the 1970s,” said Stone. “So we go back a long way and so when the job opened 10 years ago, he asked me if I was interested and the more he talked, the better it sounded. That is pretty much how it happened.”

Nelson helped Stone through some tough times during his Suffolk career. Being the incredible and sincere human being that Nelson is, he reached out to Stone and was there for him all the way through the darkness.

“He was very supportive,” said Stone who says he has learned a lot about humanity from Nelson. “When I first got here my mom wasn’t well and he knew that. He gave me a lot of flexibility in time to spend with her. And when my mom was real sick a couple of years ago, I was gone for about four weeks. Just before Thanksgiving 2012 – he let me do whatever I needed to do.  Not many people would do that.”

On Nelson, Stone said he is the old man on the mountain. “He has been here for three generations: the athletes, the sons of the athletes, the sons of sons of the athletes and he is still here, but I miss the daily contact with him.”

There are a lot of challenges to Stony’s job where he has to make sure that the athletes are all fit to play and not in the danger zone of the health spectrum.

“The hardest part of the job is the paperwork. You got to get all teams ready on a certain day, get rosters from coaches, coordinating the first day when everybody is coming in, recruiters paperwork, new people coming in. They have to have a physical, a sickle-cell test, the impact concussion test, the EKG test. If the players don’t have that done, they can’t play. There is a lot to do to make sure we have all the information about the athletes – if something does happen. In essence I’m a surrogate parent for every student athlete. Coordinating all that is tough.”

Stone, who has been the right hand of Jim Nelson and currently of Cary McConnel is exited for the future of the Suffolk Athletics: “Since last spring there has been a committee evaluating the entire athletics program. I think we are at the crossroad. We’ve got a good foundation. I think we are at a point where evaluation is needed. We have nowhere to go but up. I think the administration and the board of trustees is aware of where we are, where we have been, and how we can make ourselves better. We are waiting for that report to come out. Let’s see what the school wants to support and what we as staff can do better and the university can do better for us. The question of more personnel, the ongoing question of facility that can a corporate all teams.”

A humble, talented and diligent human being – Jeff Stone has impacted the athletic department in a positive way for the last 10 years, and will continue to do so for the coming years.