Imagine going to your first Olympic games and then winning gold for team USA – it’s not a stretch for physicians from Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine.
On Aug. 10, the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team won its fifth Olympic gold medal, beating Brazil 1-0 in the tournament final.
Behind some of the best female athletes in the world is a team of top-tier medical professionals who also take home gold, including team physician Vehniah Tjong, MD.
"It was truly incredible," she told Becker's. "It's just one of those core lifetime memories that we were really happy to share with each other. Having the whole team behind the team was really an essential part of everything."
Dr. Tjong is also an orthopedic sports medicine physician at Northwestern and a team physician for the university's football team. She was joined at the Paris Olympics by the women's soccer team's head physician, Monica Rho, MD. Dr. Rho is the chief of musculoskeletal medicine at the Northwestern-affiliated Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, a research hospital in Chicago.
"It really does take a village. The team behind the team is a real thing and much larger than what you see on TV. For every one player, there's three of us," Dr. Tjong said, referencing the cohort of surgeons, physicians, athletic trainers, physical therapists, massage therapists, performance personnel, nutritionists and dietitians that meet every day to care for the athletes.
Dr. Tjong first started at Northwestern as a sports medicine fellow in 2015, and was then hired in the department of orthopedics a year later. Her work with soccer players began in 2015 under the direction of George Chiampas, DO, an ER physician at Northwestern and now the chief medical officer for the U.S. Soccer Federation.
"He said, 'Hey, do you want to get involved?," Dr. Tjong recalled. "And I said, of course."
In Paris for her first Olympics, Dr. Tjong and the medical team watched as the U.S. defeated Brazil in a tense final match, eventually snagging its first gold medal since 2012. Mallory Swanson scored the winning goal in the 57th minute of the game.
"The team and the staff were all exhausted, but at that moment, it really just felt like everything was worth it," Dr. Tjong said. "It was a privilege and quite easy to fly the Northwestern flag with pride. Dr. Rho and I both live in the Chicagoland area, so it was also easy for us to get behind all the Chicago players and be really happy for our city."