From Pittsburgh to Canada with love: Chatham athletic trainer honors Humboldt Broncos bus crash victim with annual scholarship

While a vacation or a trip to the spa might be nice, Rebecca Kayda knows that when Christmas rolls around each year, chances are she’ll receive at least one gift from her husband that isn’t all about rest and relaxation.

“Tom is actually notorious for giving me presents that require me to run errands and put work in,” Rebecca said of Tom Kayda, the athletic director at Aquinas Academy in Hampton.

Such was the case in 2018, a Christmas that came nearly nine months after the tragic bus crash in Canada that claimed the lives of 16 people, most of whom were hockey players and staff for the Humboldt Broncos, a junior hockey team from Humboldt, Saskatchewan.

Among the victims was 24-year-old Dayna Brons, an athletic trainer for the Broncos and the only woman on the bus. Brons’ passing struck a chord with Rebecca Kayda, an athletic trainer at Chatham University who that season was the only woman on the staff of the school’s men’s hockey team. Kayda hoped to do something to honor Brons’ memory, and her husband got the ball rolling while giving his wife one unique Christmas present.

“He reached out to her parents originally and said we were interested in doing something. He said we’re not sure what it’s going to look like, but we want to honor her memory and what she was like as a person,” Rebecca recalled.

Kayda did just that by creating the Dayna Brons Memorial Scholarship, an honor that is presented annually to an athletic training student in the Pittsburgh area who exemplifies Brons’ personality and passion for the job. A $250 award was given to the inaugural winner last year, and this year the amount doubled to $500. The goal is to double it again next year.

“The primary thing is they need to be in an athletic program and want to be in sports medicine,” said Kayda, who lives in Middlesex and just finished up her seventh year at Chatham. “They need to have a good GPA and go above and beyond, and also be involved in volunteering. The primary personality traits are the ones that Dayna’s mom gave me that she liked most about her daughter: hard-working, dedicated, the passion for life, hockey and the profession. She did not seek the spotlight.”

So, despite there being more than 1,700 miles separating Pittsburgh and Humboldt, there’s now a connection between the cities. A golf outing is the primary fundraiser for the scholarship. The second annual event will take place July 15 at Birdsfoot Golf Club in Freeport. Individuals or foursomes wanting to participate can sign up on the scholarship’s website.

Kayda said that when she first talked to Brons’ parents about setting up the scholarship, they had their share of questions. For good reason, too.

“When you have a national-scale tragedy, some people reach out for less-than-wholesome reasons,” Kayda said. “I think [Brons’ mom] initially wanted to get a better idea for why I wanted to do this. She understood that my passion for this is real and that I probably would have done something like this eventually. She kind of got the sense that this is real and this is important to me.”

While Kayda has never met the Brons family, Kayda said they talk every few months. The Bronses are actually involved in the process of selecting the winner, as well. Coincidentally, last year’s golf outing was held on the same day as the Brons’ wedding anniversary.

The inaugural winner was Chatham student Matt Calas, a hockey player and native of Ontario, Canada, who was a part of the athletic training master’s program at Chatham. Calas is now a trainer at Penn-Trafford High School.

This year’s winner is Mia Anthony, a Rochester High School graduate who is in the master’s program for athletic training at Pitt.

“She’s actually won two or three other prestigious scholarships,” Kayda said of Anthony. “She was definitely an impressive applicant. One of the big things was that she’s really involved in the community.”

For more information on the scholarship and golf outing, please visit www.daynabronsscholarship.org.