From wearing the maroon and gold to donning a white coat

Over the years, many former student-athletes at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have gone on to attend medical school, taking the drive and dedication needed to excel in sports and transferring it to the pursuit of creating healthier communities. 

Here are the stories of four recent Golden Gopher alumni. All have family members who have pursued careers in medicine, and each feels their own calling as deeply meaningful and about making other people’s lives better. And they uniformly credit the hard work necessary to succeed in college sports — and the support they’ve received from the athletics department — as cornerstones of their success.

Conner Olson: ‘The light at the end of the tunnel is 1,000% worth it’

Conner Olson describes himself as a “classic hometown kid” who grew up in Monticello, Minnesota, and committed to playing football for the University of Minnesota as soon as he could. His mom actually made him wait 48 hours to commit after his visit, but his mind was already made up. 

Olson became interested in medicine from an early age. His dad is an OB-GYN practitioner in Monticello, his brother went to Princeton and is in medicine and his sister is in medical school at the University of Minnesota, Duluth campus.

Due to the extra year of football eligibility he was granted because of the COVID pandemic, Olson spent six years as an offensive lineman with the Gophers and made 58 career starts, which at the time was a program and Big Ten record. That also afforded him the opportunity to get a master’s in public health in addition to his undergraduate degree in human physiology.

Olson says balancing his pre-med studies with playing football was difficult, and he spent months holed up in Athlete’s Village preparing for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT). He says that the academic advising office was incredibly helpful, and one of his favorite honors was being named Student of the Month at Athlete’s Village. 

He did his pre-clinicals at the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth campus, following in the footsteps of his dad.

“One thing that pretty much any student-athlete will echo is that you’re splitting time between your academics and your sport, and that can be a great source of stress,” he says. In medical school, “for the first time in my life I was really focused on just the academic part. So the time management skills and everything that went into it made medical school honestly just a really fun experience.” 

Even though he says the early bombardment of information is like drinking from a fire hose, he would certainly do it again. Olson just finished medical school in the spring, and his residency is in orthopedic surgery in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 

One thing he’s learned is that medicine is an emotional field in which, even as a medical student, you’re talking to patients in a vulnerable state. A big thing is to “appreciate, especially when you’re in the rigors of it and studying for that test at midnight … that you’re going to have a profound effect on the patients’ lives that you interact with. It’s a really rewarding experience when you finally have that moment where it’s like, ‘I think I really helped this person.’

“The light at the end of the tunnel is 1,000% worth it. Anybody who has a desire to pursue medicine I think should go ahead and do it.”

Madeline and Audrey Wethington: Staying away from 22 pancakes a day

Sisters Madeline and Audrey Wethington are about as close as you can be without being twins. They’ve studied the same subjects, played hockey together for the Golden Gophers, and both love choir, running, juggling and volunteering.

About a year and a half in age and three inches in height separate them. Audrey was a forward for the Gophers and set the program record with 175 games played, while Madeline played defense and logged 173 games. Both earned WCHA All-Academic honors, and Madeline was drafted by Ottawa in the Professional Women’s Hockey League.

A love of science and a profound experience during the pandemic drew them both to medical school. 

Audrey really liked science classes in high school — even chose them for her electives — but didn’t know exactly what she wanted to pursue. Then in 2020, her grandfather, a longtime family medicine physician in Minnesota, was one of the first people in the state to die from COVID. In a memoir “he talked about how, as a physician, he could serve all types of people and make a really big impact on their life,” Audrey says. “Well, I really like science and I really like helping other people, so what better to do than become a doctor?”

Madeline had similar thoughts and remembers their grandfather’s last days. He was on the ground floor of a transitional care facility and they were able to visit with him on the phone and through the window. “The last time we ever saw him, half of the conversation was about medicine,” Madeline says. “He’s being super reflective about how much [medicine] impacted his life, and he literally said ‘I’ve never regretted going into medicine.’ That was really impactful.”

Madeline earned an undergraduate degree in cellular and organismal physiology and then a Master of Biological Sciences through the College of Continuing and Professional Studies. Audrey earned a Master of Biological Sciences after an undergraduate degree in biology. They both did research at the Visible Heart Laboratories with Dr. Paul Iaizzo. 

Although they had options elsewhere, both chose the University of Minnesota for medical school, in part to have family close by and also to build on relationships and connections they had already established in the community, including with University professors and physicians. 

Being a student-athlete for the Gophers was invaluable preparation for their careers, and both plan to pursue specialties in orthopedics, cardiology or anesthesiology. “I think the U of M does a tremendous job within the athletic department to provide all the necessary resources for a student to become successful in whatever they want to do,” Madeline says. “We spent so many hours [over in] Athlete’s Village studying and we were so lucky to have that amazing space.”

The Wethingtons acknowledged Olson’s analogy about the start of medical school being like drinking from a firehose, but their take is food-related. “It’s like eating 11 pancakes a day,” Audrey says. “You know it’s not impossible; you can definitely do it. But imagine having to do that every single day. And, say you don’t eat pancakes one day, that means you’re going to have to eat 22 pancakes the next day.

“It just builds up, and so [you have] to stay on top of it.” 

Lindsey Greenlund Ross: ‘What I do matters’

Lindsey Greenlund Ross was practically preordained to go into medicine. She grew up in Rochester, Minnesota, in the shadow of the Mayo Clinic, where both of her parents are physicians. Mealtime for her meant table rounds, where her parents would discuss, in general terms, the patients that they’d been caring for. “They’re just so passionate about it. They’re absolutely my biggest inspiration,” she says.

Medicine was the only career path Ross ever considered. She majored in chemistry and psychology at the University of Minnesota while running for the track and cross country teams, and earned her undergraduate degree in 2020. She was named Academic All-Big Ten and a Big Ten Distinguished Scholar, and was a co-captain of the cross country team in 2019. 

Ross chose the University of Minnesota Medical School in part because she wanted to stay near home and ultimately provide care to the people of Minnesota. 

“I feel like all of the docs that were teaching us really, really cared and were so passionate about our learning. That really makes or breaks an experience,” she says. “People were wonderful. And the caliber of training is just fantastic.” She finished in spring 2024 and is now at John Hopkins beginning her third year of residency in radiology.  

She had some trouble settling on radiology as her specialty, knowing that there isn’t a ton of patient interaction. But Ross knows she can make a huge impact. 

“Even though I haven’t met the person on the other side of the CT scan or the X-Ray or the MRI, I know how much what I say in my report is going to impact them.” The words there can elicit strong emotions: “cancer follow-up imaging,” “there’s been a resurgence,” “everything looks good.” “What I do matters,” she says. “It’s been really cool and I feel so lucky to be doing what I’m doing.”

Also, she adds, “I felt like the radiologists were the happiest doctors that I met, and they were all so passionate about what they did.” 

For Ross, running continues to be a positive force in her life, and she’s currently training for a marathon. “I think a lot of that was curated by my time with the Gophers. We had such a wonderful, supportive coach, and I had just the best teammates who are all still my best friends,” she says. “Having had the student-athlete experience was just such a cool part of my life.”