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PRESIDENT
Joseph “Jay” Zaffater, C. Ped.,
PFA President
[email protected]
When Things Go Wrong
As They Sometimes Do …
Don’t Quit!
Over the last year, our members will agree that the resounding message and direction
our organization, myself and the PFA Board of Directors have chosen to communicate
to our membership and supporters can be summed up in one word … CHANGE. All
of us who have served and are serving as your voice in the pedorthics community have
heard and listened to numerous compliments, advice, constructive criticism and even
sometimes not so constructive criticism that you have expressed.
As we start the new year, my message to all of you could reflect on the usual meetings,
conferences, changes or even the accomplishments we have mastered over this
past year. However, I do not feel this would illustrate well enough what I mean by
CHANGE. If you will indulge me for a few moments, I want to share a personal story
with you that I think will sum-up what I am driving at.
As a 19 year old, red-shirt freshman at Louisiana Tech, I had told my father that I
might actually be considering quitting the football team. After all, the head coach
who had recruited me, took a job at Ole Miss just a month after I had been offered
and accepted a football scholarship. After many weeks of calls and due diligence by
my family and Tech supporters, we were able to confirm that the new staff was going
to honor the scholarship.
However, you must remember that I was not recruited by this staff and I was an
unknown. I arrived for fall practice and was treated like a walk-on. For a freshman,
not so bad, because I was still receiving a college education but I wanted to play. I
worked hard on the field and in the weight room and had started to turn some heads
of both the players and coaches. Still, I was not getting the