Portland State Assistant Athletics Director for Sports Medicine Jim Wallis will retire from the Viking Athletics program on April 30. He has worked at PSU, treating Viking student-athletes, since 1989.
 
 
Jim Wallis has been talking about retiring for several years.
     
It's been nearly 31 years since he started at PSU as head athletic trainer following short stints at College of Idaho (C of I) and Lewis and Clark. 
      
Earlier this year, he told Athletic Director Valerie Cleary that this would be his last year and his retirement becomes official at the end of April.
      
"Since he's been talking about it, our former athletes are always asking if he's still here when they come to see a game or are on campus for another reason," she said.  "And that says a lot about his care of our student athletes over the years."
       
Wallis has always worked to develop a bond with the players he treats and says that, while he's had favorites, his favorite athlete is always the once he's currently treating.
       
"Every week, I have an athlete say thank you.  That's really important to me and I've been fortunate to have a lot of those moments in my lifetime," Wallis said.
       
Wallis will be hard to replace, agree Cleary and third-year Head Basketball Coach Barret Peery.  In addition to overseeing PSU's sports medicine program and teaching, Wallis specifically works as athletic trainer for men's basketball.
      
"Jim is fantastic.  He's so experienced and the hours and dedication his position requires are tremendous.  He works so closely with our athletes that they've been able to get close to him.  He's really going to be missed," said Peery.
       
This season alone, Peery pointed to Wallis' work with 6'9" freshman forward Trey Wood, who went down with a sprained ankle early.  "Jim and Trey spent hours getting him ready for the Indiana game (the season's third game).  That's a good example of his commitment," Peery said.
     
Besides his relationship with student-athletes, Wallis said his PSU highlight has been "working with my colleagues and staff…helping them on their journey to become athletic trainers."
      
In terms of the most exciting games, Wallis recalled a couple.
       
"You'd think my most memorable game experiences would be the times our basketball teams went to the NCAA playoffs.  But, the two that really stick out are a Division II football playoff game we won against West Chester (in 1989) which went to three overtimes (the most exciting game I've ever seen) and a four-overtime basketball game we won against Northern Arizona (in 2009).  We had to get to Phoenix to fly home afterward and they actually held the plane for us."
     
Wallis ended up at Portland State by virtue of coming in second for a position at Oregon State University.  And he's never been sorry.
   
"Out of graduate school (University of Arizona) I had two job opportunities.   OSU and C of I.  I came in second at OSU.  But, not getting that OSU job was the best thing that ever happened to me.  I realized that, while there can be more money, it's not necessarily a better place or pace for your life.  At those levels, you don't get as much respect for what you do and you're just a little cog in a big wheel," he said.
    
At both C of I and Lewis and Clark, more of his time went to teaching than to athletic training.  That split continued early in his time at PSU.  He taught in the School of Community Health for his first 15 years at PSU, and the past 15 has been on master committees for the graduate assistants in the Department of Athletics.
     
He chose PSU after Lewis and Clark because "it was a strong program with stable funding and because of strong health benefits," he admitted frankly.
    
"My wife had a chronic medical condition at the time and I needed a place with a good medical benefit from 1989 until 2012 when she died.  People here were kind enough to give me the time to do what I needed to take care of her," he said choking up a bit at the memory.
     
And, he's overseen major changes in athletic training here.
    
"When I first came, the facility was maybe 500 square feet and I had myself and one graduate assistant."  Today, there are four full-time athletic trainers, four graduate assistants and the facility has grown to 4,000 square feet in the newly remodeled Stott Center.
    
Most of what he and his staff treat are ankles and knees, but "we've seen some serious injuries over the years, but no catastrophic injuries.  I have seen an increase in chronic injuries related, I believe, to the increased length of seasons.  Basketball and football are now 10 months each year."
    
Especially at large, expensive programs in the top competitive leagues, there's a natural tension between training staff and coaches and players.  Coaches want players back as quickly as possible as do players.  Players don't always give trainers complete information.
     
"I won't say we haven't sent some players back before they were ready, but we really try not to.  We don't always have the information we need to make the right decision," Wallis said.
     
Acknowledging the tension, Peery said he realized "early on Jim was doing his best to balance our needs with the long-term good for our student athletes.  We've always respected his position on that."
    
Wallis professional reputation led to him being asked to work with the US Fencing teams (Epi, saber and foils) as trainer in such places as Mexico City, Moscow and Budapest as well as throughout the United States.  These teams were members of the US Olympic team.
    
He was an early advocate of the advantages of using Kinesio tape and became the foremost expert on the subject in the US and internationally and a published author on the subject.
     
Today, it's unusual to find an athletic event without a player that has kinesio-tape visible on a shoulder, thigh or somewhere else on the body.
      
In 2010, Wallis received the NATA Athletic Trainers' Association Outstanding Service Award for his career of service and achievement in the field.  He also was inducted into the Oregon Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame.  In 2012, he received the Northwest Athletic Trainers Association District Director's award for many years of service to the district.
    
Early on, Wallis said he had ambitions to become a doctor.  "I was not a good student in high school and thought the best way to prove I was smart was to become a doctor.  But when I was taking the pre-requisites, I decided I didn't have the fire it would take to finish that course of study and found that athletic training had the elements of medicine and interested me.  When I got involved, I fell in love with it."
     
That love has lasted 40 years, but he'd now like time for other interests...like traveling.
      
Due to his work with Kinesio Taping, USA Fencing and a few international trips with the men's basketball teams "I have been able to travel to such places as Paris, Budapest, Moscow, Costa Rica, Australia, Germany, Italy, Japan to name a few. Due to travel with PSU athletic teams I am close to having been in almost every state in America. I'm one of those people who likes to go back to somewhere more than once.  I've been to Paris twice and I know I've only seen a little of what's there to see," he said.
       
He's also interested in volunteering with some sort of youth organization and maybe something like Habitat for Humanity.  I want to give back and not have to be the person in charge."
    
One thing is certain about Wallis' decision to retire, according to Cleary. "He'll be hard to replace. It will be hard to fill his shoes.  He's one of the best."