Dracut’s Wood named Salem State Director of Athletics

By MATT LANGONE  | Lowell Sun

When she was a freshman at Dracut High, Nicolle Wood played on the school's first-ever varsity girls soccer team.

It was a difficult season for the new program. But for Wood, that autumn profoundly shaped her perception of athletics and the valuable life lessons learned through competition.

"Back then, being in the Merrimack Valley Conference, we were playing Andover and Chelmsford and Billerica, and these really well-established programs that humbled us a bit," recalled Wood, who graduated from DHS in 1990. "But I certainly learned how to face adversity, how to work as a team, how to see more than wins and losses and look at goals that we were trying to accomplish.

"Back then, Murph (Ed Murphy) was our athletic director. Just the way that he managed our student-athletes and the connections that he made sure to make, whether you were a freshman on the girls soccer team or you were the captain of the football team, really influenced me in terms of connecting with people outside of your bubble."

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