By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
An end to an era is coming on Friday, Dec. 16 at Barton Community College. For the past 41 years, Ken Henderson has served as
the athletic trainer at the college in Great Bend. Known as “Doc” around the
campus, Henderson will make his retirement official this week.
Tending to nearly 400 student athletes this year, Henderson is ready to hang it up.
"Once I made the decision to retire...I'm looking forward to it," said Henderson. "This is something I've been pondering for a couple of years. I talked to lots of athletic trainers, lots of ex-Barton employees, everyone kept patting me on the back and saying go for it."
Spending a year as a graduate assistant athletic trainer for Drake University,
Henderson accepted the job in his hometown in 1981. Former athletic director
Jerry Mullen offered Henderson the job.
Doc acknowledged when he first started working at Barton, the job was always meant to be a transition to a position
somewhere else. That transition never happened.
"I talked to a mentor once, and he would go 'do you have a budget to do what you need to do?' Yes. 'Do you have support from your administration and athletic department?' Yes. 'Do you have everything you need to do your job?' Yes. 'Well then, why are you leaving?' I thought that was kind of profound. As the years have gone by, and I look at jobs that I didn't try for and turned down, I made the right decision."
Henderson traveled with the basketball teams for the final time Monday for the
Cougars’ games at Butler.