Charlotte Beecher, Sports Editor
@Charlottebcour1
After serving as the Athletics Trainer at New Canaan High School for 39 years and helping thousands of students with injuries, Diane Murphy-Kivell plans to retire.
Diane works in her office every day after school helping students with their injuries and often develops close bonds to her patients. “She impacts every athlete and every student. She has been doing that since 1982, so Diane was responsible for the health and safety of thousands and thousands of athletes. It’s a tremendous impact on every single student athlete,” Athletics Director Jay Egan said.
While at the high school, Diane has been able to help many people and has been able to keep many students safe and healthy. Not only is Diane passionate about her profession, but she is equally passionate about the well being of all the students she helps, and diagnoses everything with the best interest of that athlete’s future in mind. “The memory that I am always going to have of Diane, is her true passion for the health, safety, and well being of the athletes in New Canaan,” Mr. Egan said. “The strength of conviction that she has about making sure that the right thing gets done.”
Everyone who interacted with Diane walked away with a good impression of her, and trusted that she would make the right decisions when helping athletes. Diane won the state “Secondary Athletic Trainer of the Year Award” in 2015 for her work and helped the high school win the Safe School Award from the National Athletic Trainers Association. “I think that she’s a really caring, compassionate person, on top of being extremely competent,” Mr. Egan said.
Diane said her years of experience and support from staff has helped her become a better athletic trainer. “I have many ‘moments’ from years of working with the athletes. Lots of laughter was shared with the athletes, parents and staff. The ups and downs of teams winning and losing,” Diane said. “The former Athletic Director Vin Lovino and current Athletic Director Jay Egan knew how important students’ health care was when participating in athletics and they supported my endeavors. The coaches were receptive to having someone take care of their athlete’s injuries.”
Track Coach Art Brown said he developed a close relationship with Diane over the years, and continues to be impressed by her knowledge. “Throughout the years, I go into her office at the end of the day and just talk about different things: restaurants or places we travel. She became a real friend,” Mr. Brown said. “I have also always been very impressed by her ability to properly diagnose injuries. I have a great deal of respect for her and her knowledge.”
While every athlete wants to get back to playing as quickly as possible when they get injured, Diane’s job was to ensure the athletes safety and make sure that they were fully recovered before re-entering their sport. “She actually cares about her athletes and she’s really concerned for their well being and she puts that over the athlete going back and competing. It’s more important to her that the athlete stays safe than that they rush back to participate in a sport,” Head Wrestling Coach Paul Gallo said.
Throughout Diane’s thirty-nine years, she has diagnosed every variety of injury and has been able to help student athletes, and allow them to stay healthy for future games, matches, meets, and races. Both the students and coaches at the high school have said that they benefited by having such a caring, compassionate, and knowledgeable athletic trainer. “We are very lucky that we had her here because some serious effects were probably mitigated by her having that concern for the student athlete,” Mr. Gallo said.
Everyone was always happy to spend time with Diane because of her attitude towards helping athletes and people were able to trust her with their injuries. “We’re losing such a great spirit in the building, and I am going to miss her. She helps me with my injuries, but she goes beyond that. She’s such a great person,” Freshman Katie Funk said.
On the evening of June eleventh, at Dunning stadium, there will be a formal retirement party. There will be a meet and greet from five to five-thirty, followed by a retirement presentation beginning at five-thirty. All students are invited and encouraged to come to this event to give Diane a proper send off.
Students and staff are bound to miss her presence. “ I have had close to four decades of experience. I do not think there is one memory that I will keep above the others,” Diane said. “So much that happened over my career makes me smile or chuckle.”
