Athletics Trainer "Miss Carolyn" Retires After 40 Years

The question had barely been posed — “How does it feel to be days away from retiring?” — and already Carolyn Greer was reaching for a napkin, dabbing her eyes. “See,” said Greer, “you’re going to make me cry.”

After 40 years as USD’s head athletic trainer, a span covering 419 football games and 1,171 men’s basketball games, Greer is stepping aside. To say it’s an emotional farewell for one of the first female head athletic trainers at a Division I university is the classic understatement.

Sitting inside the Student Life Pavilion on a sun-kissed summer morning, Greer said, “I have so much love for this place.”

“She’s the best,” said Johnny Dee, USD’s men’s basketball all-time leading scorer. “I never missed one game in four years. Part of that, to me, is God’s grace. And then the major part is ‘Momma C’ always making sure I was ready. Whether it was ice rehab or before practice and after practice (treatment), making sure my body was right for a game. She is so special.”

A former gymnast from the Bay Area’s Menlo Park, Greer competed down Interstate 8 at San Diego State. Her specialty was the uneven bars. She suffered a fractured sternum her junior season. It was during rehab that she considered helping athletes heal might make a nice career.

“I was watching, looking around, seeing all the rehab going on, seeing all the athletic trainers evaluating and taping,” recalled Greer. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool!’”

Greer earned her undergraduate degree in physical education with a minor in health. She earned her master’s in physical education with an emphasis in kinesiology.

When USD athletic trainer Larry Roberts was hired by the then San Diego Clippers, Greer applied for what was a 30-day interim position. Thirty days morphed into 40 years.

As to her successor, Greer joked, “If you’re at all interested you have to realize this job only opens every 40 years.”

One of her greatest joys is seeing a once male-dominated field now filled with women. Greer estimates that when she was hired, only five percent of head athletic trainers at universities were women.

“I would go to conferences,” she said, “and if you saw another female it was just not common.”

She estimates that women now comprise nearly 50 percent of college athletic trainers.

Said USD senior basketball player Tyler Williams, “She’s a pioneer.”

Greer is also proud of the strides female athletes have made collegiately. “They’ve evolved compared to 40 years ago,” Greer said. “They’re smart, beautiful, talented, confident, all those things.”

Greer stands a slender 5 feet, 2 inches but pity the coach or referee who stands in her way when an injured player drops to the field or floor.

“If I’m on the court, it becomes my arena,” she said. “It becomes my responsibility. I am so focused. I have a reputation of telling referees or other coaches to go away, maybe not so nicely. I can disconnect from everything and focus on the task at hand.”

While she’s kind, seemingly with a permanent smile plastered across her face, Greer practices tough love in the training room.

“I loved seeing her in there, talking to her, just being around her,” said senior quarterback Anthony Lawrence, who rehabbed from a broken ankle after his redshirt freshman season. “But I absolutely hated working with her. She was by far the toughest.”

Added forward Alex Floresca, who rehabbed a torn labrum under Greer’s watch, “She’s the best trainer I ever worked with. Every day she pushes you to get back on the court as fast as you can without skipping any steps so you’re fully back and don’t suffer the injury again. She cares about every athlete. It doesn’t matter who they are.”

No task was too small for Greer. She would march to the baseline and direct the youthful ball kids to a spot where a basketball player had slid, dampening the court. Or she’d drop to her knees, towel in hand, cleaning the mess herself.

In addition to her career at USD, Greer worked at the 1984 Olympics in artistic gymnastics. She worked with the San Diego Friars in World TeamTennis and the NBA Summer League. Greer taught classes at USD and San Diego State but since being employed at Alcala Park, there has been no question where her allegiance lies.

Even her Crown Point home is painted Torero blue. “I like the color,” she said.

Added Dee, “She is literally a Torero for life.”

When Greer received a distinguished alumnus award from San Diego State in 2007, Greer joked to former USD Athletic Director Ky Snyder, himself an ex-Aztec, “I walked into Nordstrom and had to ask where the red section was.”

In 2009, Greer was inducted into the Far West Athletic Trainers’ Association Hall of Fame.

She has answered to multiple nicknames during her 40 years on campus. “Momma C.” “The Greer.” “Momma T” for Toreros. But the nickname most often directed her way, especially by the men’s basketball team, was “Miss Carolyn.”

Greer admits she cried when she broke her retirement news to the basketball team.

“We were really just shocked,” said Williams.

After finishing 20-14 last season, the team is loaded for next season with four of the top scorers and five of the leading rebounders returning.

But when is a good time to say goodbye?

“There will always be seniors (you’ll miss). There will always be a great team coming up. You have to make your decision,” said Greer.

Asked what she liked about her job, Greer replied with a question of her own. “What’s not to like?”

She talked watching athletes mature. “You see them grow from being a kid to being an athlete,” she said.

She had her favorites. On football coach Dale Lindsey: “He’s a rock star. He’s so experienced and he understands our role.”

Regarding Jim Harbaugh, now Michigan’s head football coach, Greer said, “Harbaugh was extremely challenging in so many ways. He has such a passion for football. His whole focus in life was football. He would challenge us.”

She remembers former basketball coach Hank Egan being asked if he could work with a female athletic trainer. She recalls Egan answering, “Male, female, green, blue? I just want to win basketball games.” Added Greer, “To him, it wasn’t important. It was, ‘Can you do the job?’”

Of the woman who turned USD’s women’s volleyball program around in the 1990s, Greer said, “I loved Sue Snyder’s intensity. She was a coach who had a real good sense of what her team and athletes were. She wouldn’t over train them.”

One of her favorite basketball players was the late Mike Whitmarsh.

“Mike was an incredible athlete, a great leader on the court, but he had such a wonderful, playful personality,” Greer said. “He was a pleasure to be around.”

And of Dee, she added, “He’s Johnny Dee. What’s not to like? He’s just the nicest person ever.”

Greer said she has no initial grandiose retirement plans.

“Travel, see San Diego,” she said. “Take care of myself, take care of my house, take care of my family.”

For the first nine years of her 40-year tenure, Greer was USD’s only athletic trainer. Now there are six full-time trainers on staff.

After blotting tears from her eyes more than once during an hour interview, Greer said, “I’ll be fine. I can with confidence say that I’m leaving this place better than when I got here.”

— USD Athletics

All photos of Carolyn Greer are courtesy of USD Athletics