Dr. Sean Calloway’s soccer-playing career ended when he graduated from Valparaiso High School — but the sport is still giving him an opportunity to see the world.
Calloway, an orthopedic surgeon at Franciscan Physician Network Orthopedic Specialists in Indianapolis, recently traveled to Spain as the team physician for the U.S. Women’s Under-18 national soccer team during the La Manga 12 Nations tournament.
Last fall, he accompanied the U-19 women’s team to Duyun, China in that same role.
“It’s a cool way to be able to see different parts of the world,” Calloway said, “but at the same time, it’s still a job. There’s not a whole lot of down time. It’s a lot of team building things, it’s a lot of training room, just helping out injured athletes that are trying to get back to 100 percent.”
Though he specializes in orthopedics at his day job, the head physician role that he fills on these trips forces Calloway to utilize all of his general medical training. Certain situations can pull him out of his comfort zone, but he learned to embrace them all.
“I think a lot of times we get lost in our own specialties and forget that we have an M.D. behind our names,” Calloway said. “That means you’re qualified, or you’ve at least been trained, to be able to take care of anything a general doctor can.”
During the Spain trip, Calloway was faced with the challenge of having to diagnose a concussion that one of the girls on the team sustained during pre-tournament training — one that forced her to miss all three of the American matches.
A Valparaiso native who received his undergraduate degree from Notre Dame, Calloway earned his medical degree from the Indiana University School of Medicine and then completed his orthopedic surgery residency training at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.
During his residency, he worked with sports teams at the University of Memphis as well as the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies and the Memphis Redbirds minor-league baseball club.
Calloway also stayed active with various teams while completing his orthopedic sports medicine fellowship in Santa Monica, California with the Kerlan-Jobe Institute. He worked as assistant team physician for the Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer as well as Pepperdine University and several local high schools.
That fellowship provided him an in with U.S. Soccer, one that has already taken him to Asia and Europe. He hopes to one day have the chance to catch on with a local professional team and perhaps work a bigger international event, such as an age group World Cup.
In addition to his work with the U.S. teams, Calloway will soon have the opportunity to impact soccer players locally. He was recently tabbed as the team physician for the Bargersville-based South Central Soccer Academy as part of a new arrangement between SCSA and Franciscan that begins next week.
“It’s a huge soccer club, and with pretty high-level soccer as well, so I’m looking forward to helping out with that,” Calloway said.
