Photo courtesy of BlueGoldNews.com Longtime WVU basketball trainer Randy Meador will retire at the end of the month. Meador was the team’s trainer over the last 40 years.

MORGANTOWN — It slipped through without proper fanfare a couple of weeks back, the announcement that an all-time West Virginia basketball great would be retiring at the end of this month.

If you go looking for him on the list of WVU greats you won’t find him for not only has he scored 2,309 fewer points than Jerry West, but he has scored also five fewer than Jay Jacobs, but there’s no telling how many baskets or victories Randy Meador has contributed over the last 40 years as the team’s trainer.

If West’s idea of a shot was a jumper from the elbow, Meador’s shot was more a hypodermic needle into the elbow.

That’s why they called him “Doc.”

And if you want to talk about records set, here’s the one record the modest Meador will boast about in his career.

“In my 40 years, I have never missed a game … an exhibition game … an overseas game. I feel very fortunate about that, and I’m proud of it,” he said.

His job was to tend to the pains and sprains and strains a basketball player receives in the course of a 30-or-so game season, but it also went from pains and sprains and strains to brains, for he was part doctor, part psychologist.

Probably isn’t bad at making a bowl of chicken soup for what ails you, too.

“Sports psychology was not a big deal as I was going through school so that was something I had to pick up along the way,” he admits. “One of my old training friends always said that in treating athletes it’s most important that they know you care.”

Whether it was a roll of tape, massage, a back brace, he applied it all to an athlete who knew that it wasn’t just a job he was performing, but that he really cared.

It all started as a kid growing up in Ohio, his father being the team photographer at Miami of Ohio.

“He did all the video for Miami’s football and basketball. I tried to hang out with him as much as I could because I liked sports,” he said.

Then one day the Miami athletic trainer at Miami grabbed hold of him.

“What are you doing? Let me show you this,” he said.

“Once I figured out what he was doing as an athletic trainer I liked that a heck of a lot more than filming and helping my dad carrying his heavy cases,” Meador said.

So, he followed him around, watched him work, and trusted him. He went to school at Miami and graduated from there.

“He said to go to West Virginia for grad school. I did, I worked football for one year and here I am now, 40 years later,” Meador said.

“I got hired quickly because Catlett had a European trip coming up and his trainer had just quit. I got hired and fell right into an overseas trip. It was kind of nice, a kid out of Ohio going over and seeing five countries in Europe right away.”

Think about it. He was there for Catlett, for John Beilein, for Bob Huggins.

Even a week with Dan Dakich, which he skips over.

He’s seen it all from his seat at the end of the bench. His greatest memory?

“The Final Four,” he answers without so much as a hesitation to think about it and it’s understandable. “It took 25 years to get there.”

And while it went unnoticed, he had as much to do with that run as anyone.

What’s remembered most, of course, is how Da’Sean Butler blew out his knee at end of the national semifinal loss to Duke, Huggins kneeling over him, cradling his head, comforting him, but Meador was right there, too, and was for quite some time after.

“Oh my gosh, I helped rehab him like three times,” Meador recalled “He would go to Europe, spend three months, then come back and we’d get together trying to get his leg ready for another year. He’d go back, play and come back again.”

But, before that, there was Truck Bryant’s injury right before that memorable Kentucky upset that got WVU to the Final Four. It was a broken foot and not only did Meador have to comfort and treat Bryant, but he had to get his replacement for the Kentucky game ready to play, no easy task since that was Joe Mazzulla, whom he’d been nursing through the entire season with a bum shoulder on his left (and shooting) arm, which he could not raise above his shoulder.

Mazzulla, now the coach of the Boston Celtics, also has his former teammate, Butler, on his staff. Mazzulla willed to victory with 17 points, three assists, shooting free throws with his right arm and often defending No. 2 Kentucky’s big man DeMarcus Cousins down low.

“You think about it, Joe going from not being able to shoot at all to being able to be the most valuable player when we beat Kentucky,” he said.

It was a miracle of modern medicine and old-fashioned toughness, which is something Meador has wrestled with in recent years. He’s seen WVU change, the sport change, the facilities change, the athletes change and his athletic training profession change over 40 years.

“The change in sports over the last four years compared to the last 36 has been crazy,” he said. “We’ve had four coaches in four years.”

Think about that for a moment … Huggins, Eilert, DeVries and now Ross Hodge. And with that in this portal era, the change in the personnel changes just as rapidly.

“This team this year is totally different than last year’s. We have two guys who redshirted but we have 0 points coming back,” Meador said. “The guys are nice. They were nice last year, but you don’t develop that long-term relationships.

“Yesterday Truck Bryant and John Flowers stopped in to say hi. Those things aren’t going to happen in the future, or at least I doubt they will. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture for the future as far as developing long-term relations goes.”

And that makes it difficult on the trainer.

“It goes back to psychology and personality. You have to know what you should be getting out of each guy and that’s getting tougher over the years with the players coming and going. Like last year, coach would ask me a question and I’d have to say ‘I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s a “sweller” or not a “sweller”. I don’t know his pain tolerance. I don’t know his compliance, will he be in here rehabbing every day or not?” Meador said.

“I don’t know the players as well as you used to. The questions the coach asks are fair questions, but sometimes I have to say ‘Ask me tomorrow because I’ll be able to evaluate the injury by the amount of swelling it has or the amount of strength or motion he has.'”

So now retirement awaits, just a couple of weeks away. What will he do with it?

“Whatever my wife says,” he laughs. “No, I don’t want to say I’ve ignored my house forever, but there’s certainly projects around the house. We want to travel more. We like Morgantown. We will stay in Morgantown. My seat at basketball games will be different but I still have my two seats at football games.

“It’ll just be a different pace.”

The decision to retire was not an easy one.

“It was a very difficult decision. There’s a lot of stuff I’ve missed. I’ve already had a lot of emotions as it gets closer and closer. There’s a lot of things I enjoy about it. There’s a lot I’m going to miss.”