Kellogg Community College Athletic Trainer Thomas Lawrence has been inducted into the Michigan Athletic Trainers’ Society Hall of Fame.
Lawrence, the head athletic trainer at KCC since 2010, was honored by the MATS during an awards luncheon at Eastern Michigan University in June. He was the only trainer inducted into the MATS Hall of Fame in 2017 and is one of less than 30 inducted into the Hall of Fame since 1990.
“The other athletic trainers in the Hall are legendary in Michigan sports,” Lawrence said. “To be included in that list is really a humbling honor.”
A 1975 graduate of St. Philip Catholic Central High School, Lawrence is also a KCC alumnus, graduating from KCC in 1977 before earning a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University in 1980 and a master’s from Western Michigan University in 1983.
KCC Athletic Director Tom Shaw said Lawrence is an outstanding athletic trainer who’s excellent at his job and a joy to be around.
“Tom has a great rapport with everyone and really takes care of our student-athletes,” Shaw said. “Most athletic trainers do not get the recognition or credit they deserve for what they do, and it’s great to see Tom get his just reward through this prestigious honor.”
Lawrence, who’s worked as an athletic trainer with the local hospital system in Battle Creek for 30 years, has cared for student-athletes across a variety of athletics programs during his time at KCC, including baseball and softball, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s soccer and women’s volleyball. He’ll have even more work cut out for him starting next fall, when KCC adds men’s and women’s cross-country teams, and in the following years as KCC brings back a women’s soccer team in 2019-20 and adds men’s and women’s bowling teams in 2020-21.
Prior to becoming the athletic trainer at KCC, Lawrence worked for more than four years as head athletic trainer at Albion College. He was nominated for the MATS Hall of Fame by his son, Andrew Lawrence, who himself now serves as head athletic trainer at Albion College, and Vahan Agbabian, one of the elder Lawrence’s former students who now works as an athletic trainer with the University of Michigan Health System.
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