POSTGAME
Catching up with Tulsa’s former athletes
Dr. Brad Boone Tulsa sports physician enjoys ‘getting people back in the game.’ by DOUG EATON
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TulsaPeople JUNE 2015
Dr. Brad Boone, center, evaluates University of Tulsa football player Garrett McGrady on Skelly Field at H.A. Chapman Stadium in 2013. Returning to Tulsa, Boone joined Eastern Oklahoma Orthopedic Center in 1991. During his 24-year medical career, Boone has concentrated on the care and treatment of knee, shoulder and elbow injuries with an estimated 10,000 knee surgeries and a similar number of shoulder surgeries behind him. Boone, along with Dr. George Mauerman, serves as the University of Tulsa’s team physician. Although he attends to all TU athletes, Boone spends the bulk of his time on campus caring for the Golden Hurricane football players. From two-a-day practices in the early August heat until the last frigid game in December (or January, in the case of a bowl game), Boone attends every practice in which contact is scheduled. Add in travel to and from outof-town games, post-game injury
evaluation sessions and Sunday training room treatment, and Boone’s fall schedule is hectic. In addition to athletic injuries, he also treats an expanding demographic of “weekend warriors.” “People are living longer, pushing themselves more, and they want to be more athletic later in life, which often results in injuries,” he explains. Besides his work for TU, Boone is the team orthopedic surgeon for the Oral Roberts University baseball team, the Tulsa Drillers, Broken Arrow High School and his high school alma mater. He has performed surgery on a multitude of athletes from area high schools and universities, including OU, Oklahoma State University, Arkansas and Kansas. Boone played an instrumental role, along with other physicians and emergency medical techni-
cians, in saving Devon Walker, Tulane University football player, who suffered a life-threatening injury on the turf in H.A. Chapman Stadium against TU in 2012. “That was a terrible accident that no one ever wants to see,” Boone says. “It always helps to be prepared and have some experience in trauma management. This past season when Devon came back to TU, I got to talk to him and his mother and they were very appreciative.” When he’s not caring for patients, Boone spends his minimal downtime fishing and duck hunting. “Dr. Todd Brookover (a Tulsa urologist) is a good friend of mine and we enjoy hunting together,” Boone says. “We hunt down on the Deep Fork River, where we have a little cabin, and we try to get out on the weekends during hunting season.” tþ
Evan Taylor
The University of Tulsa Athletic Department
T
ulsa orthopedic surgeon and sports physician Dr. Brad Boone suspects he got his penchant for science from his parents. His father, Richard, was a geologist, and his mother, Mattie, was a longtime math and science teacher at Garfield Elementary School in Sand Springs. Besides being an outstanding student, Boone was an accomplished athlete at Charles Page High School in Sand Springs, where he excelled in football, wrestling and baseball in the late ’70s. He came close to being crowned a state wrestling champion his senior year, finishing state runner-up in the 148-pound weight class. Likewise, his CPHS baseball team also was a state runner-up. In football his senior season, the Sandites were undefeated during the regular season before a onepoint heartbreaking loss to Stillwater in the first round of the playoffs. “John Blake (former University of Oklahoma football player and later OU’s head football coach) played nose guard on that team and I played linebacker,” Boone recalls. “It was pretty easy to play behind a guy like John.” Boone received his undergrad degree from OU in three years, then obtained his medical degree from the OU College of Medicine. From there he went to Memphis, where he completed an internship and residency in orthopedic surgery at the University of Tennessee for Health Sciences. He eventually studied sports medicine under prominent orthopedic surgeon Dr. James Andrews, who has been featured on ESPN for his work on high-profile, blue-chip athletes.