Karen
Thatcher does not hesitate to initiate a change of course if she sees the need.
She transferred from one Division I hockey program to another in both her
playing and coaching endeavors. In between, she modified her preferred landing
spot in the healthcare sphere on the fly.
So
when, at age 26, the 2010 U.S. Olympian sensed that others were pushing her
retirement clock too quickly, she took action.
The
proverbial war of attrition that was the tune-up tour and culminating Vancouver
tournament left Thatcher in need of spring back surgery. As she transitioned to
her rehabilitation regimen that summer, a chance to upgrade her silver medal to
gold in 2014 was the obvious beacon.
Obvious,
that was, to her. Not so much to her first physical therapist.
“I
like to say that he helped me rehab back to my mom’s life, but not to mine,”
Thatcher told Pucks and Recreation. “I could have worked a desk job and walked
around the block, but I was not prepared to play hockey. It was very
frustrating and upsetting.”
With
that, she effectively fired her therapist and found a replacement who agreed to
collaborate with her strength and conditioning instructor. The move, not unlike
the prolonged detour on the ice that precipitated her injury to begin with,
cemented another new long-term aspiration.
“The
teamwork of care I received that finally helped me recover was inspiring, and quite
literally changed my life,” said Thatcher, who had previously planned to pursue
a career as an orthopedic surgeon before her big break with the national team.
“I
vowed to study physical therapy so that I could help bridge this gap between
athletic training, strength and conditioning and physical therapy to help all
athletes recover and pursue their dreams to the best of their physical
ability.”
Thatcher,
who will turn 33 at the end of February, is now three months away from
obtaining her doctorate at The Ohio State University. She intends to shuffle to
a position in sports medicine next year while continuing to chase a Ph.D. in
health and rehabilitation sciences at the same school.
With
her dual degree, she hopes to take to her new field what she had brought to the
rink earlier this decade. That is, the energy to practice and preach the game
simultaneously.
Persistence
produces new passion
Raised
in Douglas, Mass., a suburb of Worcester, Thatcher tallied numbers and accrued
accolades that inevitably exuded top-notch potential on the ice. In 2002, she
finished her scholastic career at Noble and Greenough School with 222 points. That
same year, the Boston Bruins bestowed the John Carlton Award on her as the
region’s top girls’ player.
When
she arrived at Brown University, the Digit Murphy-led program had just seen
three of its four 1998 Nagano gold medalists return for the second women’s
hockey Olympic tournament in Salt Lake City. The Bears were also coming off
their first (and still only) NCAA tournament bid.
Thatcher
would stick to the Ivy League institution for one season, retaining a 4.0 GPA
all the while, before transferring crosstown to Providence College, which had
produced an unmatched seven 1998 and four 2002 U.S. Olympians. As a junior, she
posted a college career campaign with 58 points and piloted the Friars to their
fourth consecutive conference postseason pennant.
She
topped the team charts again as a senior in 2005-06, good for a share of Hockey
East MVP honors and Patty Kazmaier consideration. Nonetheless, she presumed
nothing in the way of a long-term international or lucrative professional
playing gig.
With
her eye still on a career in orthopedics, she joined the British Columbia
Breakers semipro team with intent to fill a gap year before launching her
graduate studies. But fortune broke a friendly grin that fall when she was
placed on the national team.
“I
decided to put my academic aspirations on hold while I pursued my athletic
dreams, knowing that I could always return to school but I could only be an elite
athlete for so long,” she said.
Three
nomadic, back-and-forth seasons between the international ranks and the Western
and Canadian Women’s Leagues culminated in regular action at the Vancouver
Olympics. America’s 2-0 gold-medal loss to Canada, followed by the effects of
her back ailment, only whet Thatcher’s appetite to rerun the four-year sequence.
“I
felt very strongly that I could not retire while injured, because that would be
giving up on myself,” she said.
In
late May 2010, the Colgate Raiders brought Thatcher closer to home through
an assistant coaching vacancy. She would last barely 12 weeks there before
pouncing on an equivalent opening at her alma mater.
Between
her return to Providence and the concurrent advent of the CWHL’s Boston Blades,
Thatcher prolonged her formal involvement in the game for three more seasons.
Serendipity had extended her playing days. It had allowed her to reunite with head
coach Bob Deraney at PC and with her former Brown bench boss, Murphy, in the
Hub.
And
it laid the groundwork for her next change of heart.
Thatcher
admitted that, over time, orthopedic surgery “felt too impersonal to me, and,
more importantly, I discovered I don’t really care for the operating room.”
Conversely,
she continued, “Through the many injuries sustained over a 25-year career in
hockey, I discovered a love for physical therapy. I loved learning about how
the human body moves and how to manipulate this movement to facilitate
recovery.
“Each
time I sustained an injury, it was always my physical therapist that helped me
heal both physically and emotionally. I knew this was how I wanted to help
others.”
New schools of
thought
The
last of Thatcher’s injuries aborted her bid for a passport to Sochi one year
ahead of the 2014 Games. In a Blades road bout with the Calgary Inferno, she
endured what she characterized as “the third time I had sustained a concussion
where I lost consciousness.”
Two
months later, the Olympic team began its first phase of preparation by
assembling its candidates for 2013 summer tryouts. When Thatcher got the call
that April, she reluctantly declined the offer.
“It’s
been four years since that concussion, and I still notice lingering deficits,”
she admitted. “While I never wanted to retire while injured, I didn’t feel that
I could take that risk with my brain given the new information begin released
regarding concussions and long-term consequences.”
Having
procured more money as a personal trainer and as a nanny after leaving her
two-year coaching stint at PC, Thatcher eased into the off-ice life she had
resolutely resisted in 2010. By the time her ex-teammates were resetting after
yet another Olympic heartbreak, she was answering her revised call to Columbus.
Eight
years removed from leaving Providence with an undergraduate degree in biology
and Summa Cum Laude distinctions, Thatcher chose OSU’s DPT/Ph.D. dual degree program as her next academic challenge. Students complete their clinical degree
in a three-year period, then carry on with the longer road toward certification
to teach the field at a university.
The
latter will be Thatcher’s primary focus after she finishes the former in May.
As the department’s website explains, “It requires you to conceive and
successfully complete an original investigation to develop original knowledge
in your field. At the completion of the Ph.D., you write a dissertation, which
may be the equivalent of a few published research articles. Hence, the Ph.D. prepares you to become an
independent scientific investigator in your field of study. In our program, it
also prepares you to become a leader and effective teacher in your profession.”
Critical
thoughts are already brewing in what will soon be a patient-turned-therapist
and student-turned-master’s head. A more assertive pitch for the profession is
at the forefront of her agenda. Behind it, she hopes to help unearth more
methods of healing that can substitute for surgery.
“As
Americans, we tend to want the quickest and ‘best’ fix, and we have come to
believe as a society that for many musculoskeletal injuries, this must be a
surgical procedure,” Thatcher said.
“However,
I’ve learned over the past three years that surgery isn’t always the answer. An
appropriately administered course of physical therapy can often help
individuals avoid surgery. I’ve come to really value the ability of physical
therapy prior to surgical interventions to alleviate pain, correct abnormal
movement mechanics and potentially avoid surgery.”
‘…an incomparable
preparation…’
The
what-ifs from the journey to Russia that never was still roam around Thatcher’s
quarters like a pocket-size pachyderm. The unfulfilled mystery loiters, but she
values the existing gains as they apply to her new ambitions.
“After
the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, I felt I had more hockey in me,” she said. “I knew
I wasn’t done yet. It was my dream to complete my hockey career in the 2014
Olympics in Sochi, and it is still disappointing that my concussion in 2013
kept me from competing for that opportunity.
“While
I will never know whether or not I would have made that Olympic team, I am able
to look back and know that I did everything I could and that I gave all that I
had. This means everything to me. To be able to move forward in my life with no
regrets, knowing that I gave everything within me to work toward my dreams.”
To
that point, other IIHF jamborees in China, Finland and Sweden sandwiched her
2010 Olympic excursion. She credits those opportunities with prolonging the
pleasure of full-fledged hockey involvement while expanding her interpersonal
horizons, which she will value in her next occupation.
Ditto
the knowhow on how to handle “working in a fast-faced team environment” and “the
intangible characteristics of determination, hard work and enthusiasm which
high-level sport cultivates.”
She
added, “Couple all of this with an intense appreciation for physical activity
and the capabilities of the human body, and my career in hockey provided an
incomparable preparation for my career in physical therapy."
The
2011 and 2012 Four Nations Cup, where the Americans took first place in
Scandinavia, proved to be Thatcher’s last go-around in the Star-Spangled
Sweater. But they were also part of the extension on her playing days she had
proactively ensured by changing the personnel on her rehab regime
post-Vancouver.
As
she nears her clinical certification, she is itching to return a favor to the
next athletic generation. When she relives the restoration scenario on the
other side of the partnership, she aims to get the objective right the first
time.
“It
is imperative that patients trust their physical therapist,” she said. “With my
background as an athlete, I am able to empathize with my patients, which helps
them trust that I truly do understand how they may be feeling and thus trust my
treatment a bit more.”
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