TEAM PLAYERS Sports medicine physicians play essential role in health of athletes Pictured above: Dr. Cole Beavis; facing page: top, Dr. Cole Beavis; bottom, Dr. Mike Nicholls By Girard Hengen Oh for the glamourous lifestyle of a sports team doctor – the travel, the crowds, the cheering. Dr. Mike Nicholls, a Regina physician, recalls his stint as team doctor for the Canadian national wrestling squad. The team operated on a shoestring budget and on most trips abroad, the medical entourage numbered exactly one. “If we decided to send a physician, often that guy was doing taping and dealing with medical crises and sometimes even massaging or warming up the athletes. It was a real dowhat-you-can MacGyvering in a lot of situations on the fly.” No matter where he went, there were rewards, and challenges, Dr. Nicholls said. “The thing that I enjoyed the most about working with the national wrestling program was these were world-class athletes who toiled away in obscurity in Canada, but who were literally household names in some countries where wrestling is a popular sport. We’d go to places in the world where we always joked it’s not safe to drink the water, and if it’s not safe to drink the water, wrestlers will go there.” Dr. Nicholls played most sports while growing up in Regina, but was not really a master of any. He returned to Regina
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after graduating from the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine, and worked in family practice and emergency. While in emergency he was asked to help the physician who covered University of Regina hockey games. It was an eye-opener. “My initial reaction when I went to a U of R game was, ‘Holy crap, somebody could get hurt here.’ I was impressed by the level of contact and how fast it is.” When the U of R’s physician moved, Dr. Nicholls worked at the university in a small family medicine clinic, and fell into sports medicine almost by accident. He started reading about sports medicine and attending conferences. He joined the Canadian Academy of Sports Exercise and Medicine (CASEM), which grants a diploma in sports medicine to physicians who complete training in the field and write a certification exam. He wrote the exam in 1998 and received his diploma. From there his experiences as a team physician snowballed – from under-18 world hockey championships in Europe to the world junior hockey championships in Moscow in 2001. He continued to work with wrestling teams at the U of R, and the national men’s and women’s teams that travelled to Europe. He was medical director for Wrestling Canada from 2005 to 2013.
