| | Our 2022 Community Partner
While the challenges continue, so do the good works done by our neighbors, our teachers, our health care providers, our volunteers and so many others. This is their story. Ledyard National Bank is proud to support the 2022 Hometown Heroes, who were nominated by members of the community and selected by editors of the Concord Monitor. Nominate your Hometown Hero Today. |
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| | Hometown Heroes: Kim Kenney has been coaching and teaching in the Merrimack Valley School District for more than 30 years
By RAY DUCKLER Monitor staff
Kim Kenney has strong roots, grown decades ago in the Penacook and Boscawen regions.
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| Like many graduates of Merrimack Valley High School, Kenney’s athletic prowess, featured in three sports during the 1980s, created a connection with the sports-crazed area. Her longtime local coaching career in her beloved field hockey has only added to her reputation as a loyal and passionate conduit to the school’s rich sports history.
That’s why someone wrote anonymously to the Monitor, adding the longtime Boscawen grade school teacher to the newspaper’s list of Hometown Heroes.
“When I graduated I wanted to stay true to Merrimack Valley (high school),” said Kenney, who coaches the high school junior varsity field hockey team. “I was student teaching in Concord at Walker School, and there were great people and teachers there, but I knew I wanted to come back to Merrimack Valley.”
She moved through the Merrimack Valley School District in the 1970s and early ‘80s, graduating from MVHS in 1984. By then, her accomplishments in field hockey, basketball and softball were well-established.
She’s been teaching third graders at Boscawen Elementary School for 34 years. She’s coached field hockey in the school district for 33 years, including 23 as the school’s varsity coach. She won a state championship, posting a career varsity record of 201-151-16.
Ever the competitor, Kenney noted that she filled in once for the school’s regular field hockey coach. Merrimack Valley won that game.
“That’s 202,” Kenney said.
More than wins and accolades, though, Kenney is about teaching girls to play field hockey and learning life lessons from the experience. That’s why she runs her own free summer field hockey camp for players in kindergarten through 6th grade.
It’s all volunteer work. This past summer’s camp drew 40 girls, spread out over four teams, a high number of participants relatively speaking, and a sure sign that Kenney continues to have an impact on the sport nearly 40 years after graduating high school.
The youth program keeps her busy in July and August, with one-hour practices once a week and jamborees on weekends. Kenney demands that her players are held accountable for their decisions and actions, something she and her older sister, Debbie Drouin, learned from John Cheney, their father, who raised his daughters alone while Kim was 2, Debbie 4.
John worked for Hood Milk and made a modest living. He helped Kim see beyond life’s material possessions. She began working at 16 years old, paid for her own clothes in high school and paid her way through Plymouth State College.
John died suddenly from a heart attack 30 years ago, when his daughters were both in their 20s. Kenney thinks about him often.
“He worked hard, but we did not grow up with much,” Kenney said. “But we knew we were loved very much and he held us accountable. If we broke the rules, there were consequences. He taught us not to always be into money, that there were other things important in life.”
She’s dedicated her life to working with students and athletes in the school district, the same one that helped shape her. She was named New Hampshire’s Teacher of the Year for her work at Boscawen Elementary School in 2006.
And one year ago this month, Kenney was inducted into the Merrimack Valley High School Sports Hall of Fame, along with former basketball star Scott Drapeau, Class of 1991, and three-sport star Mark Fontaine, class of ‘72, who was named the Concord area’s Athlete of the Year in 1972 and earned All-New England First Team status playing baseball for UMass Lowell four years later.
Kenney said that publicly singling her out made her feel uncomfortable. She felt bad for other talented athletes during MV’s Hall of Fame ceremony last year, saying, “That was a wonderful honor, but I felt weird because there are so many other great athletes out there. I’m hoping in time that they will be inducted too.”
She was also named varsity Field Hockey Coach of the Year in 2009 for her work with the MV varsity team. She said she’s emerged over the years as an important figure in the MV School District with help from the people she has surrounded herself with.
“I cannot do what I do and what I did without help,” Kenney said.
Currently, she has five former players working with her youth program. “I am not foolish,” Kim said, “with who I surround myself with.”
She’s made sure that those individuals have strong connections to what is affectionately known by a large community of insiders as The Valley.
“I always knew,” Kenney said, “that if Merrimack Valley wanted me, I wanted them.”
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