On Saturday at UNMC’s spring Omaha commencement, Beau Kildow will receive his M.D. degree. It will likely be his greatest highlight at Ralston Arena.
Likely be? Well, there was that game-winning touchdown earlier this season.
Kildow, who matched at Duke and is headed for a residency in orthopedics, spent his last two years of medical school also playing professional indoor football for the Omaha Beef.
The team, which runs the gamut from schoolteachers and cops to those still hoping to become full-time athletes, got a kick out of adding a medical student to the mix, his former coach said.
“The guys really liked it and embraced it,” said Steve Heimann. “They gave him a lot of grief for it, in a fun way.”
Kildow’s teammates also made him a team captain this season. The previous season, during his third year of medical school, he’d played so well as a wide receiver he was placed on the ballot for league rookie of the year. Kildow likely would have won the award, Heimann said, had he not torn his medial collateral ligament (MCL) mid-way through the season.
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Beau Kildow runs out of the tunnel at the Ralston Arena. |
But it was that injury that gave him another highlight: “The kid that fell into my knee, he had a pretty big laceration on his thigh,” Kildow said. “Dr. Brown (team orthopedist David Brown, M.D., a clinical associate professor of orthopedic surgery) asked me if I wanted to sew him up.”
The teammate didn’t bat an eye as, right there in the Beef locker room, the football player they all called “Dr. Kildow” got to work.
Kildow, an All-American and Academic All-American at Morningside College, said he had always played “recklessly.” But now, knowing more about the body and how it works, he can’t help but look at the game differently.
Still, he’s loved every moment, these past two seasons. He’s savored the kids asking for autographs, the adrenaline of the games, the camaraderie of practices and locker rooms.
Putting on his pads and helmet for the last time.
He’s already done so. Commencement will be his final appearance at Ralston Arena. Residency beckoning, Kildow is leaving med school and football at the same time.
The first two years of med school, this kind of juggling would have been impossible. These last two, he’s pulled it off.
Impressed? Kildow isn’t. “I have a friend who had two daughters during med school,” he said. “I have no idea.”