About Health and Safety
Part of the NCAA’s core mission is to provide student-athletes with a competitive environment that is safe and ensures fair play. While each school is responsible for the welfare of its student-athletes, the NCAA provides leadership by establishing safety guidelines, playing rules, equipment standards, drug testing procedures and research into the cause of injuries to assist decision making.
The Committee on Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports serves to provide expertise and leadership to the NCAA in order to provide a healthy and safe environment for student-athletes through research, education, collaboration and policy development. The committee is made up of 20 members who serve four-year terms, each of which comes from medical, administrative, legal, coaching or student-athlete backgrounds. View the current roster here.
Health and Safety
2012-13 Competitive safeguards committee roster
The competitive-safeguards committee is made up of 20 people who serve four-year terms to research, educate and advise NCAA member institutions on the best practices and safeguards that provide student-athletes with a safe and healthy competitive experience. Current members of the committee are:
Jeff Anderson
Director of Sports Medicine/Team Physician
University of Connecticut
As chair of the committee, Anderson brings 17 years of experience in the health care of NCAA student-athletes as Connecticut’s director of sports medicine. He also serves as coordinator of the university’s drug-testing program and its site coordinator for the NCAA drug-testing program. He is also the medical director for research for the university's Human Performance Laboratory and assistant clinical professor of family medicine in the University of Connecticut Medical School, where he serves as a faculty member in the NCAA’s Sports Medicine Fellowship.
Brant Berkstresser
Assistant Athletics Director/Head Athletic Trainer
Harvard University
Berkstresser has worked as a Division I athletic trainer for more than 20 years after graduating magna cum laude from West Virginia and earning his master’s degree from Kansas. He is a current member of the Ivy League Ad Hoc Committee on Concussions and is involved as the co-author of an injury rate and cardiac study of Division I student-athletes.
Bob Colgate
Assistant Director
National Federation of State High School Associations
Colgate earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Chadron State and has completed 90 hours toward a doctorate of philosophy in sports administration. He has previously served as director of intramural and recreational sports and as the director of football operations at Chadron State. He has worked for the Nebraska School Activities Association.
Scot Dapp
Head Football Coach/NCAA Football Rules Committee member
Moravian College
Dapp has been a college football coach for more than 30 years and has been Moravian’s head coach since 1987. Dapp has also worked as an athletics trainer and has maintained his NATA certification since 1977. He earned his bachelor’s from West Chester and a master’s from North Carolina.
Michelle Gober
Associate Athletics Director
Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
Gober worked as a certified athletics trainer for six years before moving into athletics administration in 2003 to better position herself to help student athletes from a decision-making role. She maintains her NATA certification.
Eric Hall
Associate Professor of Exercise Science
Elon University
A professor of exercise science at Elon, Hall has conducted research in exercise and sport science and presented his work to national conferences for more than 10 years after earning his Ph.D. in kinesiology from Illinois.
Matthew Horn
Student-Athlete
Winthrop University
Horn is a junior soccer player enrolled in the honors program at Winthrop, pursuing a bachelor’s in biology with a minor in chemistry. Horn aspires to become an orthopedic or pediatric surgeon and is working as a student intern at North Carolina’s Medical Center in Charlotte.
Melinda Larson
Head Athletic Trainer/Athletic Training Education Program Director/Associate Professor
Whitworth University
A 1992 Whitworth graduate, Larson remained at her alma mater and spent 18 years working as a collegiate certified athletic trainer. She is also currently serving on the NATA College/University Athletic Trainers Committee. In 2010 she received the NATA Athletic Trainer Service Award.
Kelsey Logan
Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine
The Ohio State University
With degrees and training in internal medicine, pediatrics and sports medicine, Logan brings a unique mix of expertise in the health and safety of athletes. Logan’s clinical interests have focused on concussion education and management, female athlete health and cardiovascular issues in athletes. She has helped developed policies in those and related issues at Ohio State and a variety of high schools, colleges and administrative boards.
Lois Mattice
Associate Athletics Director
California State University, Sacramento
Mattice has worked as Sacramento State’s athletic trainer for the last 19 years and in 2006 was appointed associate athletics director for internal affairs/senior woman administrator. She previously worked as a physical therapist in the private sector.
James Morgan
Professor
California State University, Chico
As a member of the Cal State-Chico faculty for 26 years, Morgan’s classes span law and management, with an emphasis on employment law. The topics Morgan teaches are similar to those addressed by the CSMAS, including life-work balance, depression and other forms of mental health, privacy, chemical dependency, drug testing and physical disabilities.
Doug Padron
Assistant Athletic Director for Athletic Performance
University of San Francisco
The chair of the Drug Education and Drug Testing Subcommittee, Padron joined USF in Dec. 2011 after spending the last 10 years at Monmouth, where he served as Associate Athletic Director for Sports Medicine. At Monmouth, Padron initiated the school's drug and alcohol education program, started the Student-Athlete Peer Leadership Program and the Frosh Education Program.
Sourav Poddar
Director, Primary Care Sports Medicine
University of Colorado, Boulder
The Buffaloes’ team physician has helped implement several injury prevention programs into Colorado’s health-care strategy, including a warm-up program based on the FIFA11 for the women’s soccer team, individualized physiologic testing for endurance athletes, and incorporation of non-contact ACL prevention screening and prehabilitation into the strength and conditioning program for athletes competing in at-risk sports.
Felix Savoie
Director, Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine
Tulane University
Savoie earned his bachelor’s and medical degrees from LSU and has now served as a team physician for more than 20 years with high schools, community colleges and universities. Savoie has also worked as a professor and director of sports surgery centers, specializing in elbow and shoulder surgeries.
Andrew Smith
Head Athletic Trainer
Canisius College
Smith started his career as an athletic trainer at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point before joining Canisius in 1996. He has since served on the USOC Sports Medicine Team at the Summer University World Games, the World University Games and was a host athletic trainer for the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championships and the NCAA Frozen Four.
Christopher Ummer
Director of Athletics/Head Men’s and Women’s Cross Country Coach
Lyndon State College
Ummer started his career at Lyndon State as the school’s head athletic trainer and has remained certified for more than 20 years. He was promoted to athletics director in 2004 and has served on the adjunct faculty for exercise science since 1986.
Jacqueline Cohen
Student-Athlete
Roger Williams University
Jacqueline Cohen is a swimming student-athlete majoring in psychology and minoring in marine biology. Currently serving on CSMAS as the Commonwealth Coast Conference and Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference representative, Cohen is also a member of the NCAA Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and helped facilitate a leadership forum in Chicago in 2011. Jacqueline has also served as a student advocate at Roger Williams for the past two years where she was responsible for mentoring 20 to 25 incoming freshmen.
David Pillen
Former Student-Athlete
Abilene Christian University
A former football Student-Athlete who earned his bachelor’s in electronic media, Pillen is now the acting liaison for Abilene Christian University and the Lone Star Conference on the National NCAA Division II Student-Athlete Advisory Committee while pursuing a master’s in Organizational Human Resource Development and serving as a graduate assistant for Game Operations and Marketing at ACU in Abilene, Texas.
Lori Runksmeier
Director of Athletics
New England College
Runksmeier has been the Director of Athletics at New England College since 1999. She holds a bachelor’s degree in physical education and English and a master’s in sports administration from Minnesota State-Mankato and has been active on several NCAA committees over the last decade, including the NCAA budget committee and the women’s ice hockey committee. She is currently a member of the Division III Management Council and is a member of National Association of Collegiate Women Athletic Administrators (NACWAA), from which she is a graduate of the NACWAA/Hers Institute for Administrative Advancement.
Will Prewitt
Commissioner, Great American Conference
A member of the Division II Management Council and Football Rules Committee, Prewitt has led the Great Ameican Conference since 2010 after spending the previous 12 years as associate commissioner for the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, where he primarily worked with championships, sport administration, scheduling and media relations. He is also a past member of the Division II Championships Committee.
