Background
Michael C. Murphy was born on February 26, 1860, in Westboro, Massachusetts, the son of Irish immigrants. Murphy's father had a reputation as an athlete, and Murphy's desire as a youth was to become a great athlete.
Michael C. Murphy was born on February 26, 1860, in Westboro, Massachusetts, the son of Irish immigrants. Murphy's father had a reputation as an athlete, and Murphy's desire as a youth was to become a great athlete.
A good sprinter, by the age of twenty, he was traveling around the country participating in the six-day foot races which were popular at the time. He also played took up boxing and played minor league baseball. Mike then used what he learned from his fellow athletes to become a trainer. His natural ability to identify and to train athletes, including boxer John L. Sullivan, quickly put Murphy in high demand as a trainer and coach. In 1887, just a year after he established a training camp in Westboro, Murphy was so successful that he was called to become athletic director at Yale University. He remained at Yale until 1896, except for a three year stint as trainer of the Detroit Athletic Club. Murphy's frail health, however, prompted him to seek an alternative to the harsh New England winters.
Thus, in the fall of 1896 Murphy came to the University of Pennsylvania to train track athletes in the spring and to take charge of the physical conditioning of football players in the fall. He quickly made Penn a power on the track and field. During Murphy's first season as track coach, Penn captured the intercollegiate track championship, scoring 34 points compared to 24. 5 points for Yale, their nearest rival; Penn's margin of victory was even greater in each of the following five years. But then, in 1901, Murphy returned to Yale, and Penn lost its edge on the track and field. After Murphy returned to Penn for the 1906 season, he gradually rebuilt the team so that Penn was again able to capture first place in intercollegiate competition in 1907, 1910, 1912 and finally 1913. Over his ivy league career, fifteen of the twenty-two track teams coached by Murphy at Penn and Yale placed first in this intercollegiate competition.
Murphy's success led to his appointment as trainer for the United States Olympic teams of 1900, 1908 and 1912. In 1900 Murphy took 13 Penn athletes, along with a contingent from the New York Athletic Club, to compete in track and field at the Paris Olympics; these Penn Olympians won an amazing number of medals: 11 gold, 8 silver and 4 bronze. At the 1904 St. Louis Olympics, while Murphy was at Yale and not an Olympic coach, two Penn track athletes won two silver and one bronze medal. After Murphy's return to Penn and to Olympic coaching, four Penn track stars won two gold, one silver and two bronze medals at the 1908 London Olympics. At the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, the last in which Murphy coached the United States team, seven Penn men won two gold, one silver and one bronze medals on the track and field.
Murphy coached and trained Penn's athletes right up until his death. Murphy, long in fragile health, had contracted tuberculosis a few years earlier, perhaps because of a cold caught on the snowy fields of Ann Arbor during a Pennsylvania-Michigan football game, November 18, 1911. The evening after Penn won its 1913 intercollegiate track and field championship, the members of the team gathered around Mike's bed to tell him about the victory. He then lapsed into unconsciousness and died three days later, on June 4, 1913, at his home at 4331 Chestnut Street, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Michael C. Murphy was married to Nora Long, by whom he had three children.
