A New Challenge

A severe knee injury sidelined Julie Haley's promising basketball career. Saint Paul College helped her find a new outlet for her athletic aspirations—and got her started on a promising new career.

Julie Haley's physical therapy career started shortly after her basketball career ended. In the fourth game of the season in her senior year of high school, Haley got hurt—a torn knee ligament that ended her season and started her on the long road to rehabilitation. "I was bummed and bitter and mad," says Haley, who was a serious basketball player. "But when I went to physical therapy, my therapist helped me with much more than just the therapy. She helped me so much that I decided I wanted to do something along the same lines."

So Haley started college at the University of Wisconsin—LaCrosse in 1999 as a physical therapy major. But like many of her classmates, she changed her mind along the way. By the time she graduated in 2003, she had earned a degree in communications. After a little more than a year working in sales, however, the itch was back. "I knew I wanted to do physical therapy," she says. "And I knew that if I wanted to do it, I had to do it now, before I had a family and everything."

And just like that, Haley quit her job and enrolled at Saint Paul College, where she could take the prerequisite science courses she would need to apply to the Mayo School of Health Sciences in Rochester. "Saint Paul College was in close proximity to where I lived," she says, "and it was cheaper than the University of Minnesota. Plus, I had called Mayo and asked if it would be a good place to go—and they said it would be great."

Haley, now 25 years old, was one of only 28 students who were selected to start the physical therapy program at Mayo this fall; it will take her the better part of three years to earn her degree and become a doctor of physical therapy. But thanks in part to the year and a half she spent at Saint Paul College, she feels completely prepared for the challenge.

The 30 credits she took during her year and a half at Saint Paul College—including courses in chemistry, anatomy, and physiology—laid the foundation for what she is doing now at Mayo. "Those were very important classes," she says. "That was the perfect groundwork for what I'm doing now. The anatomy and the chemistry are directly applicable to the classes I'm taking now."

It was also a great place for Haley to effectively shift from a career in communications to a medical field. At Saint Paul College, she found the flexibility she needed to maintain a part–time job as a rehabilitation tech at a nursing home while attending classes. "I needed flexibility," she says. "I was working part time and I needed a school that could be flexible with me. They were really helpful and understanding and made it work for me."

Haley says the rigor of her studies at Saint Paul College also has served her well now that she's at Mayo. Chemistry and anatomy were particularly tough classes, she says—challenging, but beneficial. "I really respect the level of education that's available at Saint Paul College," she says. "I wouldn't have been ready to go to Mayo—I probably wouldn't even be in this program right now—if Saint Paul College hadn't prepared me so well."

The bad news is that no amount of physical therapy could prepare Haley to return to the basketball court. "It's just too long a process of recovery," she says. "I still get a little scared about it now."

The good news, though, is that she'll soon have the opportunity to help other athletes. "I really wanted more of a direct route to helping people," Haley says. "I'll be able to do that."

Sara Gilbert is a Mankato-based freelance writer.

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