May 30, 2006
Notre Dame, Ind. – Notre Dame junior women’s lacrosse player Meghan Murphy (Centennial, Colo.) has been selected to the 2006 ESPN The Magazine Women’s Academic all-District Five At-Large team. By being selected to the all-District team, Murphy moves to the national ballot for Academic All-American honors to be announced in June.
Murphy, who bounced back from a season-ending knee injury in 2005, finished the 2006 campaign fifth in scoring for the Irish with career highs in goals (14), assists (9) and points (23) while helping the Irish to the best record in program history (15-4) and a trip to the NCAA championship where they lost in the semifinals to Dartmouth, 14-8, on May 26. Two of her goals were game winners, including a goal as time ran out in and 11-10 win over Syracuse on April 29.
In the classroom, Murphy owns a 3.70 grade-point average with a double major in anthropology and pre-professional studies. She becomes the first Notre Dame women’s lacrosse player to receive Academic all-District honors since Kerry Callahan `99 was an all-district and second team Academic All-American in her senior year in the spring of 1999.
Earlier this spring, Murphy became the first Notre Dame women’s lacrosse player to receive the prestigious Christopher Zorich Service Award for her role in community service work in both the South Bend community and her hometown of Denver, Colo. A member of the Notre Dame Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), she will serve as the organization’s vice-president in the 2006-07 school year.
At Notre Dame, she has participated in and helped organize a variety of projects with other students and members of the women’s lacrosse team. Among her service activities, Murphy has been involved with the YWCA Women’s Shelter Spring Cleaning, the Cavanaugh/Zahm Winter Carnival and several projects at the Center for the Homeless, including cooking and serving meals, spending time at Thanksgiving with the children and helping coordinate a shoebox assembly first as part of a class and then as a SAAC project that delivered several carloads of personal items for use at the Center. Working with children has been a focus for Murphy as she has been involved with holiday parties for kids at both the St. Joseph’s Pediatric and Memorial Hospital Pediatric wings, as well as Notre Dame’s annual Christmas Pediatric Party.
Murphy and the women’s lacrosse team also participates in the Adopt-A-Family program that purchased Christmas gifts and coordinated a Christmas dinner for a local family. In her hometown, Murphy has spent her summer vacations working as a volunteer at the Skyridge Medical Center, with the Sixth-Floor Recovery for Spinal and Orthopedic Surgery (in 2004) and in 2005 worked with the University Hills Rotary Club (’05), chaperoning a Zoo Day for children with physical and mental disabilities.