Mount Royal joins in remembering athletic therapist
When Dayna Brons first arrived at Mount Royal University, she was a “shy, mildly terrified” athletic therapy student.
That’s true of most students who enter the program, according to Kate Trippier, one of her practicum supervisors.
“The only difference is Dayna did it with a smile on her face,” Trippier said Wednesday, as more than 40 of Brons’ former classmates and teachers, as well as MRU faculty members, coaches and athletic therapists from across Calgary, gathered to remember the 24-yearold who was one of 16 people killed in the April 6 Humboldt Broncos bus crash. She died in hospital on April 11.
Brons’ funeral took place Wednesday at Elgar Petersen Arena in Humboldt at the same time as her former community at Mount Royal gathered to pay respects.
“That smile was one that seemed to stick around for the entire semester and the entire year. I remember looking back and going, ‘oh, man, there’s gonna come a time where that smile breaks,’” said Trippier. “It happens to everybody but, again, Dayna dumbfounded me and it even trekked along through mid-terms.”
Brons graduated with an advanced certificate in athletic therapy from the university in 2016.
It was there that “Brayna,” as she was nicknamed, also did her practicum with Mount Royal’s men’s soccer team.
“She was the only girl on a boys’ team when she was here, too, but the men’s soccer team didn’t seem to mind,” said Trippier. “They even had a secret handshake that they ’d do with Dayna before the games.”
Mina Fadol, another of Brons’s supervisors, said that what stood out was her steadiness and dependability.
“There were layers to Dayna,” Fadol said. “At first she appears quiet, maybe a little shy. And if you’re lucky enough to get past those layers, you then get to see easygoing, mature, fun Dayna.
“No matter what layer of Dayna you got, you got dependable Dayna.”
Guests of the memorial, which also included Mount Royal president David Docherty, department of health and physical education chair David Legg, and current students enrolled in the athletic therapy program, were invited to sign a soccer jersey instead of a guest book.
Photos of Brons graced the athletic therapy lab where she once studied, and both a hockey stick and fanny pack stood in the doorway.
“She’d probably cringe with all this attention,” said Fadol.
She told those who gathered Wednesday that since Brons’s death, one particular memory has stood out in her mind, which illustrates the type of person Fadol came to know.
“She came to me distraught and upset about something she was going through,” Fadol said.
“And in the situation, Dayna was wronged. As we talked through it, she kept on being concerned about the other party involved. Her main drive was to rectify the situation, without the other party being singled out.”
Adrian Presnilla, who has been enrolled in the athletic therapy program since two months after Brons graduated, said the tragedy has touched his entire class, even though they never knew her.
“You think, it’s a hockey team, there must be an athletic therapist on the bus. … literally what I first did is look up their roster and think, like, ‘do we know this person?’” he said.
“As things unfolded and finding out she was from Mount Royal, she graduated a year before us, it hit close to home. We’ve ridden a lot of buses these past two years.
“We just feel and relate to this tragedy. It could have been any one of us and our hearts go out to her and her family.”
Trippier encouraged the athletic therapy community to honour Brons every time they go to work.
“Next time you pick up your kit, stand on that bench or get on that bus, know that you’re not working alone,” said Trippier. “Know that every tape job, every decision and every day, Dayna’s on the bench with you.”