MC’s Sanctuary for Athletes

Many know her as the hero who nursed a sprained ankle or tendonitis-ridden rotator cuff back to full strength. Others see her at games riding into action to give medical attention to fallen athletes. We all know her as Diane Lawrance, MC’s beloved athletic trainer.

Diane has been MC’s trainer for three years, but dabbled a bit in other fields before discovering her niche for athletics.

“When I went into undergrad I thought I wanted to be a nurse,” Diane said. “Then being with athletics my whole life, participating in sports like lacrosse and soccer, I realized I wanted to work with the athlete population. That was the motive that lead me to athletic training.”

Her first year out of school, Diane went on to become an assistant at RB high school, where she first started to encounter an assortment of injuries.

“We had a lacrosse player who hurt his lower leg in a game, and then he came into the training room the next day and his whole lower leg was completely swollen,” she said. “He had acute compartment syndrome, which is where he tore a muscle in his lower leg and the swelling compressed on all the nerves and blood vessels, He had to go in for emergency fasciotomy, where they had to cut into his skin, so that was pretty crazy.”

Diane has seen and tended to enough gruesome injuries to scare anyone off, but she is extremely knowledgeable, dedicated, and passionate about what she does.

“I love being a trainer at MC,” Diane said. “It’s fun. I like that every day is different, I think that if I sat at a desk all day I would go crazy.”

The genuine bond that she gets to form with each of the athletes is also a bonus.

“I like that I get to interact with you guys [students],” Diane said. “I love getting to know all of the athletes. I love watching athletes go from being injured to being able to fully participate, and I think that it’s a really unique relationship that I get to have with our athletes.”

Thanks to the help of such  a reliable trainer as Diane, the legacy of MC athletes can continue to grow.

“I just try to help everybody in the way that they need to be helped and I hope that I make a good impact on all of them,” Diane said.