Larry Egge, the charismatic face of Eastern Oklahoma Orthopedic Center for nearly three decades, was inducted Saturday into the Oklahoma Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame.
EOOC’s current sports medicine coordinator has played a primary public relations role, attending and sponsoring hospitality for a wide variety of sporting events from the high school to professional level.
He is frequently EOOC’s first contact with coaches, athletes and administrators across Green Country.
“Larry has helped to not only grow, but likewise maintain, EOOC at the forefront of excellence in orthopedics and sports medicine in Tulsa,” an EOOC news release said.
Induction was during the OATA banquet at the University of Central Oklahoma.
Raised in Rapid City, South Carolina, Egge studied athletic training at the University of Arizona, served as a trainer at Wichita State University and worked for a time in the St. Louis Cardinals baseball organization.
In 1982, he arrived in Tulsa as an athletic trainer with the original Tulsa Roughnecks soccer franchise in the North American Soccer League.
Though he knew little about the sport, he learned quickly and remained with the club through its 1983 Soccer Bowl championship season and the demise of the NASL in 1985.
Egge joined EOOC in 1985 as a high school and college athletic trainer. In 1988, he began a three-year hiatus from EOOC to travel internationally promoting U.S.A. Soccer for a firm in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He rejoined EOOC in 1991.