Murphy Inducted Into Orange Plus Hall of Fame
10/9/2003 8:47:29 AM | Volleyball, General
“It’s unbelievable to me to be part of the Hall of Fame and grouped with the other volleyball players,” Murphy said. “When I found out, I was ecstatic.”
The Orange Plus Hall of Fame luncheon was held at Drumlin's Country Club on Thursday, Nov. 6. Proceeds from the lunch and a silent auction benefit women's athletics at Syracuse. In addition, Steve Parker, photographer for SU Athletics, received the 2003 Billbrough Award for his outstanding support & commitment to women's athletics over the years.
Murphy played from 1993 through 1996. She was a Verizon/CoSIDA Academic All-District Team selection in 1996. Murphy was also a three-time All-BIG EAST selection, and a two-time BIG EAST Academic All-Star. During her career, she was named team MVP three seasons, and she was a four-time member of the Athletic Director’s Honor Roll, which was established when she was a junior. She holds the career kills per game record (3.66), and she shares the school record in matches played in a season (37). In addition, she ranks in the top 10 on 13 other single-season and career lists.
When she looked back on her career and considered where she started, Murphy found her accomplishments quite impressive.
“I was a terrible volleyball player when I began,” Murphy said, “and I started late in the eyes of most people – when I was a freshman in high school. I couldn’t even serve the ball over the net. Not even underhand. Nothing I did athletically was due to talent, that I can tell. It was all an accumulation of practice. Everything I have done well athletically has been because I was shaped by my coaches – Dale Barker at Highland, and Dan Shulte and Jing Pu at Syracuse. It’s their work and honor really, not mine.”
Humility aside, Murphy is thrilled to receive such an honor from the place she called home for four years. She heard the news while driving from Laguna Beach to her mother’s house in Bakersfield, Calif., and it turned out to be the best news she’d heard all day.
“It was only 9:30 in the morning, and I had the flu and a high fever,” Murphy said. “I had spoken to Sarah Layden, also an SU volleyball player and consequently a close friend of mine, earlier that week. She had just moved from Syracuse to Indiana, and I remember saying, ‘Now I have absolutely no reason to visit Syracuse.’ So when the phone rang and it was SU, I had a pretty big laugh.”
Being a student-athlete at Syracuse helped Murphy learn the kind of lessons most college athletes learn: time management, responsibility to others, how to work with people. But for Murphy, her experience as a student-athlete taught her much more.
“I didn’t realize until I got to Syracuse that I had this developing belief that one could either be an athlete or be intelligent; one could be a feminine woman or a female athlete, but probably not both,” Murphy said. “The greatest part about being a student-athlete at Syracuse was that I learned I was dead wrong. I got to test all of my inner convictions through direct experience and found out that one can be as many different types or kinds of things as one wants, which blew my mind at the time, and turned me into a pretty dynamic human being – in the work place, in the social arena, in general.”
One conviction that Murphy has held on to since her playing days at SU is one involving the state of women’s college athletics in different regions of the country.
“In California, being a female volleyball player gives you a lot of power (money) to go to school (on scholarship), and this sport, for this reason, is highly supported and regarded,” Murphy said. “Where there is money, there is power, and women are pretty powerful in volleyball out West, as well as the other hot-climate states like Texas, Hawaii and Florida. Back East, however, it’s a different story. It’s all about basketball and football. In one sense it can be frustrating to be part of women’s athletics because it is always a bit of a struggle for attention – playing for a smaller audience, for example.”
However, not having the pressure of being an athlete in a powerful sport helped Murphy maintain equilibrium during her college career.
“It was a good experience because it meant there had to be balance between athletics and the rest of my life and what I hoped for myself; it gave me something to work toward, and I was consequently able to fully participate in my education because I wasn’t under the illusion that something after SU would happen for me athletically – the NBA, for example. In hindsight, I’m happy to have been an Orangewoman. And even happier I’m not in the NBA.”
As a result of her positive experiences at SU, the honor Murphy will receive this fall is very important to her.
“Syracuse was a special place for me,” Murphy said. “I’ve had a number of amazing experiences in Syracuse and at SU, and the best part is they seem to continue. It always feels great to be honored, although the accomplishments I had at Syracuse are not really mine: they were more of a gift from other people – my coaches, my professors, my teammates – than anything I created on my own. Except for my height. My mom and dad gave me that.”
