Rex Sharp (NAHS ’75)

Faculty 1979-1981

It’s a big assertion and yet, it feels undeniable. No New Albany grad has done more than Rex Sharp… for so many student athletes, teens through college… to make sports successful, rewarding and safe. Period.

Rex went to Ball State with a prestigious full scholarship and earned his bachelor’s degree (magna cum laude) in athletic training. He returned to NAHS, a certified athletic trainer and licensed to teach high school biology. With five full courses of biology teaching, it was tough to be the athletic trainer also. Two years led him to re-assess his options.

There are multiple career paths for an AT: high school (and middle school), college athletics and of course, pro sports. Nowadays, there are also many new roles for athletic trainers, serving professionals with high performance demands (first responders, the military and more). Rex knew that college sports would require credentials beyond his bachelor’s degree. He went to Michigan Tech (in the Upper Peninsula, on the shores of Lake Superior) to earn his master’s degree and served as a graduate assistant AT, 1981-1983.

His first college job was in Kirksville, Missouri (the school there is now named Truman State University) from 1983 to 1985. He was their first-ever certified AT. On the whole, these six years took Rex to the “base camp” of his professional life. He was 28 years old. Was he “prepared enough”? Could he really get the attention of a Division I school? The news that a top-level position is (or will be) open… that travels fast. When an offer came from Ball State, it made Rex the youngest head athletic trainer at a “D-1” school in the entire NCAA.

He had only two choices: fail or excel. Treading water just wasn’t an option. Rex excelled, focusing on football, while also coordinating the sports medicine support for a full 20-sport program. In his eleven-year tenure at Ball State, he figures that he mentored over 100 student AT interns. Six of those have now gone on to be the head AT at Division I schools in their careers.

The next chapter in his life would prove to be his Mt. Everest. He met the challenge, and then some. Hired at the University of Missouri as head AT in 1996 – the program he ran was honored, twice, as conference-wide AT Staff of the Year. He chaired the committee on Medical Aspects of Sport for the Big Twelve. He was named Associate Athletics Director of Sports Medicine in 2011. The following year saw the transition from the Big Twelve to the SEC for Missouri. He continued a leadership role in the SEC too. He was inducted into Missouri’s Athletics Hall of Fame in 2016 and his alma mater Ball State soon followed, by electing him into its esteemed Cardinal Ring of Honor. At both “Mizzou” and at Ball State, there are now scholarships for AT students, named in his honor. Add to all of this his 2018 induction into the NAHS Hall of Fame. He is 100% equally proud of that.

He elected to retire in 2020. What would he do? Move? Florida? Yes. Return to work? Well, yes, to that also. Since last July (2021), he is now the director of sports medicine at Embry-Riddle University in Daytona Beach. While he and his wife Eileen miss their adult children – one daughter and twin sons – they were back in the “Show Me” state for Christmas togetherness. The prognosis looks great for life to “show” Rex and his family enormous blessings and rewards in the years to come.

Update: As of November 2025, Rex Sharp serves as the Associate Athletic Director for Health and Sport Performance at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Read the entire January 2023 Legacy Ledger (Issue 29).

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