Feature Story: The Remarkable Comeback Of Bridget Murphy
September 23, 2021 | Field Hockey
One … There’s the whistle.
Two … My first college field hockey game.
Three … I’ve waited so long for this.
Four … I’m even a starter.
Five … It’s finally here.
Six … Boom
Bridget Murphy is walking easily across the Princeton campus. The fact that she can do this, as opposed to, say, needing crutches or one of those wheeled devices where you prop your bad leg up and push as you go, is by itself a major victory.
As she heads back to her room after a class, she is less than three weeks removed from what looked in the moment to be a devastating injury. When she left the Princeton field hockey team’s opening game on a cart, it looked all the world like her sophomore season was over literally just as it was beginning – this after her freshman season was postponed by the COVID pandemic.
There aren’t many people who’ve had rougher starts to their college athletic career than Murphy did. She graduated from New Jersey prep power Oak Knoll in 2020 all set to join a program that had most recently played in the 2019 NCAA championship game. When the pandemic wiped out the 2020 season, Murphy had to wait a year for her debut. When that wait ended and the 2021 season began, there she was, in the starting lineup on Sept. 3, against three-time defending NCAA champion North Carolina.
“I was so excited leading up the game that whole day,” she says. “We’d made it through the preseason. We were ready to go. I was so pumped.”
Her day lasted all of six seconds. Just six, unlucky, unfortunate, excruciating seconds.
“All of the sudden I just remember being on the ground,” she says. “I remember the first thing I said. It wasn’t that it hurt or anything. I said ‘I just want to play.’ It was soul-crushing.”
Erin Matson, the reigning national player of the year, triggered the ball for North Carolina. Unfortunately, her drive nailed Murphy directly on her left foot. Matson struck the ball with 15:00 on the clock. It was at 14:54 when Murphy fell to the turf. The game would be delayed for 15 minutes while she was treated on the field and eventually helped onto a golf cart and into an ambulance.
This wasn’t just some bruise either. As the ball hit her foot, she had jumped to avoid it. When she landed, she heard a pop from her right ankle.
“I’d never experienced a sound like that,” she says. “I thought I’d shattered my ankle. That’s what the paramedics were thinking too. In my head, I was thinking ‘this is the end. I’m never coming back from this.’ I’d never been in that much pain.”
“Seeing Bridget go down in the first few seconds of our first game in two years was devastating,” says Tiger junior Sammy Popper.
“'Bridget had been playing so well in the pre-season,” says Hannah Davey, another junior teammate. “I was gutted for her when she got injured like that.”
As it turned out, there was good news and bad news for Murphy. The good news? She hadn’t broken anything. The bad news? She had a really badly bruised foot, and worse, she had torn a muscle that connects her ankle to her shin and had partially dislocated her fibula. She was originally told it would be a few months of recovery.
That’s not what Murphy wanted to hear. She may be a person who starts her correspondences with an exclamation mark after a greeting, as in “Hello!,” and she may come across as gentle and affable. Don’t be fooled by that. She also has a side of ferocity, combined with a work ethic that wasn’t going to allow her to simply sit out this year, especially after last year.
Bridget Murphy comes from lacrosse parents, and Penn lacrosse parents at that. Both of her parents, mother Christina and father David, played for the Quakers, though she does have a family Princeton connection through both her uncle Dan Farkas, a member of the Tigers’ 1995 Ivy League championship football team, and Susan Butler, an aunt who played field hockey and lacrosse in the mid-’90s.
Murphy grew up in North Jersey, where the first sport she played did end in “hockey,” though it began with “ice” and not “field.” One of four siblings with three brothers who played hockey, Murphy was thrown into the mix for the sake of convenience.
“My brothers shaped me to be the player and person I am today,” she says. “They pushed me to my limits and made me stronger every day. They were always by my side, making me better.”
She tried most sports – “every sport known to America,” she says. She was introduced to field hockey in seventh grade, and by high school she was a three-sport athlete, with field hockey, ice hockey and lacrosse.
She helped Oak Knoll to New Jersey Tournament of Champions titles as a sophomore and senior and a runner-up finish as a junior. By graduation she was the school’s career record holder with 131 goals and had earned pretty much every individual honor possible: three-time national and regional All-American, three-time all-state, four-time all-county and all-conference. When it came time to choose a college, she considered her parents’ alma mater but instead was hooked on her recruiting trip to Princeton.
“When I visited Princeton, it was a picture-perfect day,” she says. “I fell in love with the campus, the team, the coaches. I knew this was where I wanted to be.”
As she made her decision, she had no way of knowing that where she wanted to be in the fall of 2020 and where she actually would be in the fall of 2020 were two different places. Actually, they were on two different continents.
When the pandemic cancelled in-person classes for that fall, Murphy and her four teammates in the Class of 2024 decided they wanted to live together and train together while taking classes online for the semester. The only question was where?
“We ended up renting a house in Canterbury, England,” she says. “It was just the five of us, five teenage girls who had never lived on their own before, thrown together to make things work. We had one car, and only Robyn [Thompson, a native of England] could drive it because you drive on the other side of the road there.”
The group consisted of Murphy, Thompson and Liz Agatucci (hometown Chapel Hill, N.C.), Gracie McGowan (Lake Forest, Ill.) and Grace Schulze (Greenwich Academy). They took classes and joined a gym, and they also found some time for field hockey, working out with a club team twice a week and even playing some games.
“We got to know each other so well,” Murphy says. “I’ve never been closer with any teammates. We formed a bond you’ll never find anywhere else. We were five girls who never met each other basically and we were living together in a different country for four of us. The worst part about not being able to play was just that, not being able to play field hockey. We were so used to the schedule of school and field hockey. It was a major part of our lives, a source to get out and unwind and relax. When that is taken away, you see a different perspective, you see what you really wanted. One of the things we came out of the experience with was that we really do love the sport so much. The time away made us realize how much we enjoyed playing.”
They were back on campus in the spring, practicing for the first time. Then came the hope of a return to games and preseason camp. Then came the disastrous first six seconds for Murphy.
“I had never seen anything like that before,” she says. “It stinks to be the first example of something like that. I did receive an Instagram DM from her [Matson] apologizing. She said had wanted to give me space when it happened on the field. It was definitely nice of her to reach out.”
Murphy had two positives to build off of, though. The first one was physical. The muscles surrounding the injuries were all strong enough to support her weight. The second was mental.
“I’m a hard worker,” she says. “I always have to be doing something. I knew that I wanted to come back, and it was going to be hard for anyone to stop me from doing so.”
“She’s one of those players who is all about effort,” says Princeton head coach Carla Tagliente. “She will do anything she can to help the team, and she’ll do it 100 percent at all times. She’s also such a great person to have with us. She is definitely the kind of person you want representing you and your team.”
As such, she immediately got to work with athletic trainer Kelly Sherman. Eventually the timeline went from several months to six to eight weeks. She was able to bring it all the way down to less than three.
“Kelly has been amazing,” Murphy says. “I was so relieved to hear that it wasn’t going to be the whole season, that it wasn’t that bad. I did everything I could to get back.”
And so it was that this past Tuesday – Sept. 21, or just 18 days after the injury – Bridget Murphy finally got to make her college field hockey debut. It came at Maryland, and she did more than just get her feet wet.
With the score tied at 2-2 in the third quarter, off of a penalty corner, she took a pass from Beth Yeager and tucked it into the cage. Somehow, in just those 18 days, she went from being carted off the field after six seconds to goal scorer. Even though Maryland would win 4-3 in overtime, it was still an incredible moment for her.
“She was so excited just to get on the field at all,” Tagliente says. “To see her go down like that in the first game, in six seconds, everyone’s heart sank. We thought that might be the end of her year right there, and to come back as quickly as she did, it’s a testament to her character. When she scored, I know every single person on the team was as happy for her as I was.”
The game against Maryland was actually on the day she was cleared to play. She hadn’t even practiced since before the UNC game. She’s back at a great time for the Tigers, who open their Ivy League schedule Friday afternoon (3) at Penn and then play No. 10 Rutgers Sunday.
“Her quick recovery was very impressive,” Popper says. “She has definitely boosted team morale. We are thrilled to have her back.”
“I wasn’t nervous,” says Murphy, a psychology major who has, somewhat ironically, always wanted to work with athletes who are recovering from injuries. “I was just so happy to be back. Everyone on the team has been so supportive of me. It was great to know that what I’d worked so hard for wasn’t lost like that. Scoring a goal was awesome. I talked to Beth before the corner, and we both just knew it was going to go in. It ended up being a goal. It felt so good.”
• by Jerry Price
