As an undergraduate student-athlete at the University of Texas at Dallas, Isaiah Swann developed an interest in research. With his family members gravitating less to science and medicine jobs and more to business and other fields, he learned the value of networking early, but he didn’t have an insider track to navigate the medical field.
“It feels almost like a different world, in a way,” he said. “One of the things you realize when you get to medical school is that a lot of people were born into this world, so they just know how to navigate it.”
Swann plays baseball at the University of Texas at Dallas before coming to UVA for medical school. (Contributed photo)
While applying to medical school, he said he was fortunate to connect with older students who helped him through the process.
“Athletes are often encouraged to pursue academic routes with greater schedule flexibility to accommodate training, which can steer folks away from lab research and pre-medicine tracks,” said Swann, who played baseball in college.
He said he talked to a lot of student-athletes who ended up choosing to drop either their science and medicine studies or their sport due to the tension of balancing both. “It’s sad to see, especially because we have a shortage of health care workers,” he said.
So when he arrived at the University of Virginia for medical school, he connected with Heidi VandeHoef-Gunn, UVA Athletics’ director of career development, seeking to create pre-professional resources for student-athletes who aspired to certain graduate fields, like medicine, law or nursing.
“Student-athletes who are pursuing a career in medicine face barriers in securing research opportunities or shadowing hours that work with their limited availability,” VandeHoef-Gunn said. “In addition to a full academic courseload, most of our student-athletes have several hours a day blocked out for training and team commitments.”
Through VandeHoef-Gunn, Swann met Jayden Isaiah Nixon, then an undergraduate playing basketball at UVA. Other medical students were connected with student-athlete mentees, and the group formally became Athletes in Medicine the following year.
Isaiah Swann (left) and Jayden Nixon (center) attend an Athletes in Medicine event at John Paul Jones Academic Center. (Contributed Photo)
With co-founders Tommy McNeal, UVA Class of 2025 and former lacrosse player, and undergraduate wrestler Kyle Montaperto, Class of 2026, Swann had conversations with organizations for student-athletes interested in medicine at different universities, including Stanford University and the University of Texas, to see what they could offer outside of mentorship.
Later that year, Athletes in Medicine began offering anatomy lab activities for current student-athletes with Dr. David Moyer.
“We hosted a hands-on orthopedic session in which student-athletes learned about knee pathologies and practiced arthroscopies with an orthopedic surgeon and residents,” Swann said. “We’ve also done cardiology sessions, neurology sessions and hosted a suturing workshop with the Association for Women Surgeons.”
The group has also successfully mentored its first mentee through the process of getting into medical school. Nixon begins his first year at UVA’s School of Medicine in the fall and, given that Swann has paused his medical school journey for a few years to complete his doctoral research, the two will end up going to school together.
Swann is completing a doctorate in cell biology and working in the lab of Bettina Winckler, a professor of cell biology, studying proteins that are important for ALS.
Nixon was born in Charlottesville at Martha Jefferson Hospital. His parents graduated from UVA in 1996 together and stayed in town, having him in 1999 and his sister in 2001.
