Nate Breske, D.P.T., a 2004 graduate of what was then the School of Allied Health Professions, thought the job interview had been going well.
But then it ended abruptly, and next thing he knew he was in a car on the way back to the airport, wondering where it had all gone wrong.
Then the phone rang: Turn around.
“I was giving fist bumps to my imaginary friends in the backseat,” he said.
He was about to become head trainer for the Chicago Bears, the pro football team he’d cheered for as a kid.
His UNMC education was a big plus: “He’s a physical therapist and an athletic trainer,” Bears general manager Ryan Pace told Chicago reporters. “So he has a well-rounded background. He’s progressive and forward-thinking.”
He helps manage the physical health of a professional sports franchise, through treatment sessions and rehab; getting players ready for practice; monitoring practice and keeping track of health issues; after-practice triage; post-practice or post-game cool-downs and more rehab; working interprofessionally with other health providers on any treatment plan.
Working with players on their biomechanics.
“You end up building relationships through injuries, unfortunately,” Dr. Breske said. “But as players stay with you, they kind of learn how to be a pro.”
Dr. Breske began with the Bears June 1.
While at UNMC, he’d done an internship with the New England Patriots. After graduating, he went home to Watertown, S.D., to open a PT practice and raise a family. In 2008, he came back from lunch to a phone call from the 49ers. It had to be a joke. Only it wasn’t.
“We were happy and didn’t want to leave our practice,” Dr. Breske said. But it was a chance he couldn’t turn down.
He was assistant trainer for the 49ers for several years. His responsibilities grew, and he looked headed for the head job. The Bears offered the chance to do that job in the Midwest.
When they were getting ready to move they found boxes of old Bears stuff he’d had when he was a kid.
Dr. Breske said he owes the 49ers for taking a chance on him, for letting him grow and for letting him go.
Now he combines his passions of physical therapy and football. Dr. Breske had been an all-state player in South Dakota and a college quarterback at Division II Northern State. He relishes those times he is out on the field working the players out.