Northwood High School athletic trainer Jackie Harpham won the NCHSAA Elton Hawley Athletic Trainer of the Year award, the NCHSAA announced Thursday.
Harpham will be presented her award at the NCHSAA Awards Celebration held at the Greensboro Coliseum Campus on June 12. This is her first athletic trainer of the year honors from the NCHSAA. In 2016, Harpham was selected as the Gatorade Secondary School Athletic Trainer Award winner for District 3.
“It’s wonderful,” Harpham said. “It was a big surprise. I had no idea (Northwood athletic director Cameron Vernon) had been going through the nomination process…I feel really humbled to be recognized for that.”
Harpham has spent her entire athletic training career at Northwood, working alongside the school’s athletes and teaching sports medicine classes since 2013. She became interested in sports medicine as a field hockey and lacrosse player at Downingtown West High school in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, thanks to a good example set by her high school’s former athletic trainer, Joe Iezzi.
Iezzi is a 2017 inductee of the Chester County, Pennsylvania, Sports Hall of Fame.
“I had an awesome athletic trainer in high school that helped me through a series of injuries, aches and pains,” Harpham said. “When I was looking for college and careers, I rediscovered athletic training as a way to apply my love of sports and working with others.”
After high school, Harpham completed her undergraduate years at Ithaca College from 2007-11, earning a degree in athletic training. She followed that with a degree in exercise science from UNC-Chapel Hill after working as a graduate assistant athletic trainer for North Carolina’s football program.
“I started to think about what setting I wanted to end up in, and I decided that high school would be a really great place for me to use my passion and help a lot of people,” Harpham said. “I started reaching out to local high schools and seeing if anyone was hiring and needed an athletic trainer, and that’s how I found Northwood.”
Northwood never had an athletic trainer before Harpham as the school just used first responders to treat injured athletes. Then athletic director Jason Amy showed interest in changing that, and former football head coach Bill Hall also advocated for the school to hire an athletic trainer. With the help of Hall’s voice, Harpham landed the perfect fit right out of college.
“If it wasn’t for Coach Hall, I probably wouldn’t have found this position,” Harpham said. “It was definitely a challenge, which I was up for, but there was some growing pains trying to establish a program here and make some new routines and new protocols. Luckily, all of the coaches, administrators and athletes have always been incredibly supportive.”
On top of her duties as an athletic trainer, Harpham teaches multiple levels of sports medicine classes out of her trailer filled with training beds, stationary bikes and other training equipment. Level one is a general introduction to sports medicine, level two handles injuries in the lower extremities and level three, which will begin next year, will focus on the upper extremities. She also allows her students the opportunity to volunteer with athletic training duties across the school’s sports.
“Something I’m most proud of is I have a lot of former students that have gone on to study in the sports medicine field,” Harpham said. “I have one student that’s working as a physical therapist right now, one student working as a sports chiropractor right here in Pittsboro. I have a lot of students that are pursuing athletic training degrees.”
Being a part of the Charger family for a decade already, Northwood is “home” for Harpham, and she plans on staying put for a long time.
“When I think back on my time here, Northwood is just a really special place,” Harpham said. “I think, more than anything, it’s just the people that are here. Everything from the administration, from our coaches, the community and then most importantly our students, I think are just the best part of my job. I feel super lucky that I have a job where I get to come to work and teach kids about sports medicine, and then after school, I get to go help keep them safe and hopefully make an impact on their lives and help them have the best experience as possible.”
