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| Nothing But The Best | |||||||||
| Tulane's Team Doctors Offer the Best to Green Wave Student-Athletes | |||||||||
| By John Sudsbury | |||||||||
| Injuries. For most athletes, they are a fact of life. In the course of competition, training, practice, off-season workouts, or just plain walking around, even the best-conditioned and most-talented student-athlete can suffer an injury. | |||||||||
| At Tulane, the story is no different. Injuries happen to student-athletes on every team - from women?s basketball players to cross country runners to football players. It's rare for a team to go through a season without at least one injury. | |||||||||
| Fortunately for Tulane Athletics and especially Tulane student-athletes, some of the finest sports medicine specialists in the country are right here in New Orleans. In fact, they are just a couple of football fields away from the WilsonAthleticCenter. | |||||||||
| Of course, Tulane's athletic training staff, including four full-time certified athletic trainers and three graduate assistants, attends to the day-to-day needs of the nearly 300 student-athletes on campus, working at every practice and game. While this staff is fully-trained to handle a wide-range of problems, supporting them is a generous team of doctors based at the Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine (TISM). | |||||||||
| The sports medicine experts at TISM are on hand at every Tulane football, basketball (men's and women's), baseball, women?s soccer and volleyball contest, as well as numerous practices and other Tulane athletic events. That works out to nearly 100 events a year, not to mention the practices and office visits. | |||||||||
| And it's not just Green Wave student-athletes. TISM is responsible for the sports medicine needs of 30 area high schools, six colleges and two professional teams. While the well-respected division of TulaneHospital and the TulaneMedicalSchool does receive compensation for clinical visits, surgical procedures and other in-office work, the time dedicated by its doctors to the student-athletes during their practices and competitions is a bonus to the schools. | |||||||||
| "A lot of schools pay a stipend to their team doctors," said Dr. Greg Stewart, one of the many physicians that work with the Green Wave athletic teams. "But at Tulane it is a labor of love. What we get are the hats and t-shirts and experiences of traveling with the teams." | |||||||||
| The bonus does work both ways, however. | |||||||||
| "The main reward we [team doctors] get is the ability to take care of student-athletes," Stewart said. "That is what we love to do." | |||||||||
| "We do this because of love for what we do and love for the university," said Dr. Michael Brunet, the Director of Sports Medicine for Tulane. | |||||||||
| The athletic training staff handles much of the of the sports medicine needs of the Tulane student-athletes. Day-to-day treatments, taping of ankles, rehabilitation of injuries, and assisting with nutritional planning are all parts of their job. | |||||||||
| After an initial evaluation of the severity of an injury, whether it occurred in a game or practice, it may be necessary to refer them to one of the doctors. From there, a course of action is planned, whether surgery, rest or rehabilitation, or a combination of all three. | |||||||||
| "The difference between doctors like Brunet and Stewart and any other orthopedic doctor is that they are sports medicine specialists," said athletic trainer John DoRosario. "They know what the demands are for a student-athlete, whether it be classes, travel, or getting back on the field. They know what it takes to be in the position of a student-athlete and they can use that information to more effectively treat them." | |||||||||
| Interestingly, both Brunet and Stewart have strong sports backgrounds which funneled them in the direction of their chosen professions. And both ended up treating injured student-athletes as a direct result of being injured student-athletes. | |||||||||
| Brunet was a standout athlete at Oakdale High School in central Louisiana and attended LouisianaCollege as a pre-med major with high hopes for his football career. He went on to attend TulaneMedicalSchool. | |||||||||
| "I played football for two years, injured my knee and that was it," Brunet said. "I had also had a couple of concussions, broke my hand three times, and broke my thumb once, so that stimulated me to gravitate to orthopedics and sports." | |||||||||
| Stewart, meanwhile, has sports in his genes, but moved to the treatment side of things early. | |||||||||
| "My grandfather was a football coach at Clemson and Rice, back in the days when they [football coaches] coached everything," Stewart said. "My dad was an All-American at SMU in the high jump and he played punter and wide receiver for the football team After college, he played a year or two for the Colts. | |||||||||
| "I was playing football in junior high school, and I hurt my knee. It was not bad, but I was out for a while. I was still around at practice and there was a trainer that I hung out with, and it appealed to me." | |||||||||
| Stewart began working as a student trainer, continued that through high school and earned an athletic training scholarship to Houston Baptist University. After medical school, he began a residency at LSU. | |||||||||
| "As residents, we did a rotation with Dr. Brunet in his clinic at Tulane," Stewart remembered. "And once I did that rotation, I kept coming back. I'll never forget doing two-a-days on campus and it was very hot that summer. But they couldn't get rid of me." | |||||||||
| Brunet essentially formed the Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine with Dr. Roy Haddad. | |||||||||
| "I did a sports medicine fellowship at the University of Virginia," Brunet said. "Then I joined Roy Haddad at Tulane. He was the chair of orthopedics at Tulane and was one of the first generation sports medicine guys. | |||||||||
| "He and I took care of Tulane student-athletes from 1979 on. He died in 1990 and I stayed on, bringing Greg Stewart, then later Treg Brown and Derek Jones on board." | |||||||||
| Stewart joined Brunet full-time six years ago, but has worked with Tulane student-athletes since 1990. | |||||||||
| All of the doctors working with TISM are recognized as experts in the field. | |||||||||
| "We are very lucky with our docs," DoRosario said. "They are all among the best in their field. Dr. Brunet may be recognized as one of the top five doctors in the entire sports medicine field. But more than that is the relationships they build with the student-athletes. Players from years ago will come back to New Orleans, and they will stop by Dr. Brunet's office, just to chat." | |||||||||
| "It's a hobby for me," Brunet said. "And I love the school. There are not many people who can say that their vocation is their hobby. But when other people are out fishing, I am on the sideline; that is what I want to do." | |||||||||
| As a result of their "vocation," the Tulane team doctors have seen some of the highest points in Green Wave athletics. They have been to NCAA basketball tournaments, to Omaha for the College World Series and they saw every game of the perfect season of 1998, including the Liberty Bowl. Yet just as satisfying to these professionals is the chance to see an individual who has surgery take the court or field again, even if only for a few minutes. | |||||||||
| "The most interesting and best thing is not just taking care of the athletes," Stewart said. "But we make a commitment to treat them as if they are our own kids. We want them to be healthy so they can play with their kids and grandkids. Building personal relationships with these young men and women so we will know them years down the road is the best." | |||||||||
| "The Best" - exactly the words that can be used to describe the doctors of the Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine and the care they give to Green Wave student-athletes. | |||||||||