BEAVER TOWNSHIP — For the past 36 years, Dr. Raymond S. Duffett and his associates at Southwoods Health-University Orthopaedics on Belmont Avenue, have served as team doctors for all Youngstown State University sports.

A former athlete who played various sports during his formative years, Duffett was a standout football player for Canfield High under head coach Sam Davis, later starring collegiately at VMI.

He said being able to relate to athletes at all levels has played a huge part in the success he has enjoyed for the past five decades.

“It has been a labor of love, there is no doubt about it,” he told the Curbstone Coaches during Monday’s meeting at Avion Banquet Center. “You have to like coaches, you especially have to enjoy being around athletes and understanding both is a plus. I was extremely fortunate in that I played all sports growing up and played football in college, so I am comfortable with the idiosyncrasies, if you will, about football and basketball players, coaches, et al.

“It has definitely helped me, along with understanding the highs when winning and the lows when someone isn’t faring so well. I spent a year with the group that took care of Cincinnati Reds and Bengals players back in 1987, the strike year for the NFL. I got to take care of those players for the Bengals, pretty intimately, which was a great experience.”

Duffett’s practice, which he co-founded along with Dr. Michael Miladore in the late-1980’s, has been on the cutting edge of new medical procedures. They are open to student-athletes in all sports while at YSU, they are needed for all football games, dividing their duties for away games with a continued presence at all men’s and women’s home basketball contests.

Like everything in life, changes and upgrades in sports medicine have occurred over the years.

“The biggest thing that has changed, especially with total knee replacement, is the use of computers and robots,” Duffett said. “Every single one of our patients has a preoperative MRI, which then goes into the computer and helps us put the total knee in more accurately. It’s called PSI, or patient specific instrumentation, and it has been around for almost 15 years. The last seven or eight years, however, it has become perfected, and while nothing is perfect, it works quite well and I use it on virtually all my total knee replacements.”

Consistency has been Duffett’s trademark.

“I have never felt burned out. You know, the big term in our profession is ‘physician burnout’ and I’ve never felt like that,” Duffett said. “We have a very busy practice and it has been like that for over 36 years. I think I have been consistent about seeing my patients, been there for them during the good, the bad and when they call me up I have made myself available for them. It’s the same with the YSU athlete so I think consistency is the best word to describe my practice.”

The future of sports medicine and how it relates to student-athletes is bright, according to Duffett.

“There is no doubt that arthroscopic surgery has revolutionized sports medicine.” Duffett said. “It is so interesting that Dr. Gary Poehling, former chairman of Orthopaedics at Wake Forest University, who did his residency at the renowned Duke University Medical Center, was at one of our meetings. He told us that the inventor of arthroscopic surgery was a Japanese orthopaedic surgeon, and his duty was to get one of his arthroscopes, bring it back to America, which is exactly what he did.

“Anyway, Dr. Poehling became one of the very first arthroscopic surgeons and is currently Chief Emeritus now at Wake Forest. I met him less than a month ago, had dinner with him, and that was remarkably interesting, to say the least. From that start, we are now becoming less invasive but the thing that is really going to be interesting in the future is artificial intelligence.

“Artificial intelligence is going to help us with diagnosis. We are going to be able to see things from advanced radiology and stuff, and the best clinical guidelines on how to treat patients is going to be interesting, where these computers even become more involved in medicine. As far as surgery is concerned, we are less invasive than we have ever been but you still have to go in there and do the job. I had a patient just this past week in the office, and I did one of his hips about 15, 16 years ago. I did his other hip last year and his incision from last year was half of his previous incision. That remains interesting to me.”

In April, Duffett and his wife, Shelley, who is an orthopaedic nurse, will move to the Winston-Salem, North Carolina, area where he will become a part-time instructor working with Wake Forest residents.

“My wife and I were taking care of our two grandchildren, and I think we kind of both came to the conclusion that if we are going to be a part of our grandchildren’s lives, we are going to have to move to North Carolina,” Duffett said. “She looked at me and said don’t you think you have operated enough after 37 years, to which I replied I think so.

“Anyway, I am 68 years old, this is my 37th year of practice and my 36th year with the Penguins but I still have a little gas left in my tank. I sent my resume to the department chairperson at Wake Forest, one thing led to another and what was originally to be a 15-minute meet and greet at Starbucks, turned into a 50-minute interview.

“I emphasized to her that I’d like to do something part-time, she said we have something part-time for you and so I am going to work two days a week or so with their residents.”

The Curbstone Coaches will take a break the next two weeks for the Christmas Holiday, returning on Jan. 6 when they honor the state champion Warren JFK boys golf team.