COMING BACK HOME TO TEXAS ROOTS
Kenny Boyd Overseeing All Areas of Student-Athlete Health and Wellness

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Foundation

Kenny Boyd and his wife, Ellen, didn't miss the Texas heat in his three years at the University of North Carolina.

"The people are what we missed," he said. "Eleven years in Austin, you start to develop some roots. The opportunity to come back to my second home, in Texas, was one we just couldn't pass up."

Boyd has been in Waco for less than two months, serving in his new role as Senior Associate Athletics Director for Student-Athlete Health and Wellness. After 11 years at the University of Texas and three at North Carolina as the head athletic trainer for football, Boyd oversees the collaborative efforts of athletics performance, applied performance, sports medicine, physical therapy, nutrition and mental health programs.

Even in his previous stops, his job had "become more and more administrative," Boyd said.

"There's so much more involved," he said. "And all these components that we talk about within sports performance are what I've had to do from a single-sport level with football. It's really honestly prepared me for the work that I'm doing now, to a degree. You think you're prepared until you actually get into it.

"It has really trended (this way) because of the increased focus on mental health, the increased focus on how we're fueling our athletes with our dietary needs. Then there's the essential factor that's always been there, that the strength and conditioning coach and the athletic trainer need to be one voice within the team. All those components were already there -- working with coaches, working with physicians, trying to develop a program around the vision of the institution. . . . I really feel that God has prepared me over the last 20 years for the task at hand here at Baylor."

A native of Pensacola, Fla., and the son of a Baptist minister, Boyd earned his undergraduate degree in exercise science and athletic training from the University of Florida in 1998.

"My father's a Baptist minister at a small church back home, and my mother is a retired Head Start teacher in preschool, so I learned at an early age the value of being a servant leader," he said. "Quite frankly, it's been a blessing to see how God's directed my path to where we are today."

Boyd added a master's in sports management at Mississippi State in 2000, then worked one year at Northwestern before going to Colorado with Steve Willard.

"I learned (at Northwestern) that it can get really cold, and my southern blood needs a little bit warmer climate," he said "I made the connections there at Northwestern when Gary Barnett was there and Steve Willard as the director of sports medicine to go to Colorado. As you look back into your professional life, you can see how your personal life was shaped."

Looking out his office window at the Simpson Athletics and Academic Center, "I can look outside and see the practice field," Boyd said, "and Coach (Matt) Rhule has been very welcoming for me to be a part of what's going on with the team."

With Boyd overseeing the areas of athletics performance, applied performance, sports medicine, physical therapy, nutrition and mental health, it puts Baylor at the forefront nationally in student-athlete wellness and care.

"Student-athlete wellness is at the heart of our Preparing Champions for Life mission, and I am thrilled to have Kenny Boyd lead us in this area," Baylor Vice President and Director of Athletics Mack Rhoades said. "He and his family embody our Christian ideals and, under his guidance, I have no doubt that we will be trendsetters nationally in terms of student-athlete wellness in and out of the athletics arena."

Beyond those areas, Boyd has seen connecting pieces in collaborating with Marcus Sedberry's academic staff in Student-Athlete Success and Deputy Athletics Director Dawn Rogers with staff development.

"We are student-athlete centered, obviously, at trying to make sure all of our efforts are centered around Preparing Champions for Life," Boyd said. "But, there's also the additional component of staff development and how we are working more together . . . initiatives within our staff where we're learning from each other about what we're doing and things we can do to improve."

Boyd calls longtime Baylor athletic trainer Mike Sims a "legacy here."

"To be able to carry forward the groundwork that people like Mike have laid at this institution," he said, "but then be able to take it to another level with the way we're collaborating as a sports performance group, it's really exciting. There is a lot of work to be done. We have a lot of ideas and there are some really great minds here that at working around our student-athletes to provide the best."

Kenny and his wife, Ellen, have three children, Taylor, 9; Macy, 7; and Owen, 5.

"One of the things that has been so remarkable for me is how welcoming the staff and community have been," Boyd said. "Talking to people on campus, I think there is excitement around the possibilities of collaboration with athletics now, to be more engaged in the process of developing student-athletes and helping them in the areas of health and wellness."

The following are other recent additions in the areas of student-athlete health and wellness:

• Dave Snyder, who became director of sports medicine in July, is a Georgia graduate who earned a master's degree from The Citadel. He spent six years as an athletic trainer at Kansas before serving the last five years as head trainer at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, where he was promoted to assistant athletics director in January.
• Matt Shadeed, who most recently served as assistant athletic director for athletic performance at Arkansas State University, came to Baylor in June as director of athletics performance for women's basketball. The Southern Mississippi graduate also had stints at LSU, Nova Southeastern University, Ole Miss and his alma mater.
• Tim DiLeo, who graduated from Springfield College (2010) and earned a master's degree from Framingham State University, was the sports performance dietitian at the University of North Carolina for a year and campus dietitian at Plymouth State University before coming to Baylor in June as associate director of sports nutrition.
• Matt Kuehl, hired as an athletic trainer in July, is a Minnesota State University graduate who earned a master's degree in athletic training from A.T. Still University of Health Sciences. He held positions at Arizona State and Kansas before spending the last three years as the associate athletic trainer/head football at Northern Illinois.
• Tyrone Smith and Stacie Skodinski came to Baylor in July as assistant athletics performance coaches for football and Olympic sports, respectively. Smith was a defensive lineman who graduated from Penn State in 2015, while Skodinski is an Eastern Michigan graduate who spent the last three years at Xavier University.