Laura Litwin is now in her 13th season at Wesleyan, having risen within the department to the Director of Athletic Injury Care in the summer of 2021. First hired as an assistant athletic trainer in February 2013, Litwin was promoted to associate athletic trainer in June 2017 and was again promoted to director of athletic injury care in July 2021.
In her new role as director of injury care, Litwin is tasked with duties as head of her department which includes three full-time athletic trainers as well as per diem workers and student trainers from surrounding colleges and universities. Her athletic training duties include practice and game coverage, traveling three seasons with assigned primary teams and developing both rehabilitation and prevention programs for the Wesleyan student-athletes. Her work with the development and implementation of COVID-19 protocols for athletic training continues to be all-encompassing as she organized remote medical clearance, online booking system for in-person appointments, pre-practice prep procedures and antigen testing.
In addition to her full-time role as director of injury care, Litwin is the athletics liaison to counseling and psychological services and has served in that role since June 2017. She is the point person for student-athlete mental health aid in connecting students to CAPS and educating CAPS on the unique role of a student-athlete. Her day-to-day responsibilities include developing, implementing and communicating mental health training for both students and coaches. Litwin co-facilitates a mental health drop-in hour with her colleague in CAPS once a week for coaches to navigate challenges around student-athlete mental health.
As an NCAA Compliance Intern in 2016, she was tasked with researching and piloting an electronic compliance system to move Wesleyan to a fully paperless model in the fall of 2017. She led a group of coaches to make the final decision on which program to use and collaborated with the IT department on campus. In the end, Front Rush compliance software was the choice as she helped pilot three winter sport teams to troubleshoot any problems in the foreseeable future.
Outside of Wesleyan, Litwin is also a research assistant for the United States Military Academy and has served in that role since June 2012. Her primary responsibilities are in NCAA-DOD Grand Alliance-Concussion Research as she explained the Concussion Assessment, Research and Education Consortium (CARE) project and led groups of 50 cadets through the four baseline concussion tests used in the study. In addition, she assisted with the implementation, supervision and data collection for a project entitled “The Effect of a Neuromuscular Training Program on Reducing the Incidence of Lower Extremity Injuries in Military Service Members.” The primary goal of the project is the evaluate the effectiveness of a lower extremity injury prevention program implemented during cadet basic training.
Her first full-time job in collegiate athletes came as an assistant athletic trainer for Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, New York from March 2010 to February 2013. At Mt. Saint Mary, she provided medical care and event coverage for 17 varsity teams year-round. Litwin developed and implemented rehabilitation protocols for injured athletes, concussion management protocol, cold weather policy for use of outdoor turf. She was also appointed Senior Women’s Sports Administrator responsible for addressing Title IX issues and ensuring compliance and Faculty Advisor for the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee.
Litwin is a BOC-Certified Athletic Trainer with state licenses in both Connecticut and New York. She is also certified in CPR for the professional rescuer (adult, infant and child), first aid and AED. She has been a member of the National Athletic Trainer’s Association (NATA) since 2008 as well as the Eastern Athletic Trainers’ Association (EATA) since 2009 and the Connecticut Athletic Trainers’ Association (CATA) since 2010.
Litwin graduated from Marist College in January 2010 with a bachelor’s degree in athletic training. She went on to earn her master’s degree in collegiate athletics administration for Northeastern University in March 2017.
