by Caleb Nickerson.

Athletics and academia.
To some they might seem like polar opposites, as incongruent as oil and water. But for Shawville native Teena Murray, who has devoted her career to the simultaneous pursuit of both, the two are inseparable.
In August, Murray started as the Senior Director of Health and Performance for the Sacramento Kings NBA franchise, heading up a team of about ten coaches and specialists, as well as looking after athletes worth millions of dollars. The move was the natural progression in Murray’s career arc, as she has already made a name for herself in the world of pro hockey and top-tier university athletics over the past two decades.
Looking back, it was probably bound to happen.
Murray’s parents Bill and Ann were the proprietors of Murray’s Sporting Goods Ltd. in Shawville, and she spent her formative years immersed in athletics.

“I grew up following my dad around to the rink and to the ball field,” she said. “I was with him all the time so I pretty much started playing hockey and softball when I was like four or five.”
“I played minor hockey with the boys growing up, fastpitch softball in the summer with the boys too because there were no sports for girls back then, outside of figure skating,” she continued. “I was with my dad all the time … out on the field with his buddies, his teammates, so I never really thought twice about it. I always felt pretty comfortable, like one of the guys.”
Murray added basketball to her athletics resumé in high school and went on to play for Wilfred Laurier University while completing her bachelor’s in kinesiology, with the idea of heading into teaching.
“Even in high school, I was always helping out coaching minor hockey and coaching ball,” she said. “I always had an interest in teaching and coaching so that’s what I ended up studying.”
It was only a few months into her Bachelor of Education at Queen’s University when Murray caught the academia bug and decided to look at graduate schools in the U.S., with an eye for programs where she could coach as well.
She ended up at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she completed her Masters in Exercise Physiology and Sports Nutrition, while serving as the assistant coach to the women’s softball team.
“It was division one, so a pretty high level softball program,” she said. “I got the opportunity to coach, and it was a really good fit.”
Upon completion of her schooling, Murray went to work for several universities as a strength and conditioning coach, including Cornell and the University of Connecticut. Around this time she also got some gigs in the pro hockey world thanks to her uncle and mentor, the late Bryan Murray.
“While I was working at Cornell, Bryan was the head coach of the Florida Panthers and he got me involved working with them, which was more of a consultant role,” she said.
In Connecticut, her connections helped her land a position with the Hartford Wolf Pack, a farm team for the New York Rangers. Bryan had moved to the Anaheim Ducks at that time and also hired her as a consultant for their training camps.
“I never had only one job, so when I was working at the University of Connecticut for example, two days a week for about two hours a day, I would go over and work with the Wolf Pack and a handful of days a year, Bryan would fly me out and I would work here and there with the Ducks,” she said.
On top of all this, Murray is a published academic with several peer-reviewed papers under her belt, focusing on the subject of athlete profiling.
“First of all, if you go to the literature, there’s not a lot that’s been published on many of the sports that we work with, but there’s also very little on female athletes,” she said. “I’ve worked with a lot of female athletes over my career. I try to take the data I’m collecting and work with colleagues that are data experts and statisticians to get things published.”
She explained that several of her papers helped bring about changes in the NHL’s combine system.
“They bring guys into a hotel conference room and in two hours they do about 12 different max-effort tests,” she explained. “Some of the tests they were doing were very outdated, and not relevant to the sport, so what we were able to do was show that there was no correlation between any single test that they were doing, or any combination of tests, and their draft order.”
“I first started publishing this stuff [around] 2004, 2005,” she continued. “They’ve made some changes to what they do, not necessarily because of us, [but] I think there was a lot of people complaining and raising the same questions.”
Prior to her jump to the NBA this summer, Murray spent the past 14 years as the director of Sports Performance at the University of Louisville, building up a program from essentially nothing.
“When I got there, part of the attraction was that there wasn’t anything in place,” she said. “For a division one program they were pretty behind on their facilities and their staffing and their programming. So when I got there I was kind of a one-woman show.”
After gradually adding staff and upgrading the facilities, Murray was pleased with where she had guided the program over the course of her tenure. Though her primary focus was on the women’s basketball and softball teams, she built training and development programs that are used by 21 of the 23 teams at the school.
“We’ve built, what I really think is the model program in college athletics,” she said, pointing to multiple final four finishes as a testament to her team’s effort.
She said that the new job opportunity was out of the blue, but it was more than just the California weather that lured her away from Kentucky. The Kings currently sit at the bottom of the league, which was a bigger draw for Murray than a downside.
“I didn’t think it would be something I’d be serious about, I took the call and started talking to them and as I learned about where they are and where they want to go, their vision certainly aligned with my vision,” she said.
“We’re bad, but it’s perfect, I want to be in on the ground floor,” she continued. “We’ve gotten rid of all our older players and we’re going to rebuild with youth, so the athlete development piece is huge for them. It’s going to take a little time but I’m excited about what we can do here.”
She credits her time working with hockey teams as a definite asset coming to the NBA, as she views hockey as the most demanding game around.
“It’s very much a fine balance between developing speed and agility … and then obviously the strength and power side of things,” she said. “I always say if you can build a great hockey athlete you can build any athlete.”
She advised anyone looking at a career in sports to get a good grounding in math and statistics, as analytics are the bread and butter of any professional sports outfit these days.
“It used to be that my focus was primarily in the weight room, just trying to get athletes bigger, stronger, fitter and faster,” she said. “Now it’s really all about the intricate management of data … but it’s not just collecting data, it’s knowing what to do with it and making sure you’ve got the right systems and processes in place.”
Looking back on her lengthy and prolific career as a coach, Murray concluded by crediting her own coach and uncle, Bryan.
“When it comes to why I do what I do, or how I got where I am, all the credit goes to Bryan, for sure. He was my mentor and I owe him everything,” she said.