Orthopedic surgeon is gold medal rower, was semipro soccer player

Executive

Dr. Sara Simmons is a board-certified and fellowship-trained orthopedic surgeon specializing in hand and wrist surgery at Coastal Orthopedics in Bradenton. She received her undergraduate degree in biology from Harvard University and worked under the Massachusetts Arthritis Foundation in the orthopedic gene therapy lab at the Harvard Center for Molecular Orthopaedics. She also completed an internship in general surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Outside the office, she is on the medical team serving Nathan Benderson Park.

Diversion

Rowing. Simmons, 53, competed in the World Rowing Masters Regatta in Banyoles, Spain, in September, where her team won in their category. Her rowing career also includes winning silver, bronze and gold medals at various international events in the 1990s. While an undergraduate at Harvard, she competed in rowing, ice hockey and soccer.

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Good sport: “I love to be active,” says Simmons. From age 4 to 16, she was a gymnast. “I was so crazy energetic,” she says, that her parents got her into sports. She also played soccer and lacrosse.

Row, row, row: As a sophomore in high school, she started rowing after a rower friend suggested it to her. “You don't have to play since you're two,” Simmons says. “Lots of people pick it up in college.” Simmons, whose “first love” was soccer, describes rowing as “different than your field sports, which require strategy, knowing the field and knowing the ball.” Rowing requires “not that much skill,” Simmons says. “It’s more about grit and determination and training.”

On ice: For half of her college career, Simmons was a three-sport athlete. One day after a 6 a.m. rowing practice at Harvard, she was walking back to campus with wet hair starting to freeze, thinking about the 3 p.m. soccer practice and 6 p.m. ice hockey practice she had that day. “I was just like, I can't do this anymore,” Simmons says. “It’s too much for me.” So she dropped ice hockey her last two years of college and stuck to rowing and soccer.

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Give-and-go: While attending medical school in Israel, Simmons had a friend who asked her to play rugby with her. Next door was a field where people were playing soccer. Simmons asked if she could play, and was encouraged to try out for the team. “It was basically a semi-professional soccer team…they pay all their athletes,” Simmons says. “So I played on this semi-professional soccer team when I was in my first [and] second year in medical school in Israel. And it was a blast.” She traveled around with the team to places like Nazareth and made friends she is still in contact with today. During her last year in medical school, she got too busy with her rotations, so she stopped playing soccer, but says: “It's amazing the places that sports have taken me.”

Game time: Simmons’ competitive spirit has translated from athletics into her career. “Getting into medical school and getting into an orthopedic residency is like a competition in its own right,” Simmons says. “I think that surviving an orthopedic residency takes a lot of grit.”

Let's get physical: As a surgeon, Simmons says she has the sense of showing up for game time regularly. Often, because she works on hands, she faces cases that are complex and new. “It’s a lot of anticipating, coming up with Plan A, B, C and D,” Simmons says. She says it’s much different from surgeons operating on joints, who may do the same hip or knee replacement 100 times. “My dad was a hand surgeon for 40 years. The last operation he did was one he'd never done before,” Simmons says. “Sometimes you've never done it but [you] take your surgical teachings and all your skill and you apply it and you figure it out. That's just what being a surgeon is about. It can be stressful but it also makes you feel great when operating” that you get that sense of achievement that comes also from athletic competition. 

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Back in the boat: After taking a hiatus from athletic training while raising her children, Simmons says she got back into running and lifting a few years ago. “It made a huge difference … in everything,” Simmons says, “but also in being in the operating room.” Despite serving as one of the doctors on the medical team for Nathan Benderson Park, Simmons had been around rowing but not engaged directly in it. Then, a friend she had rowed with at the New York Athletic Club after college moved to Sarasota part-time a couple of years ago and contacted her. “She said, ‘Come row,’” Simmons recalls. “We went on a double [in a two-person boat], and I was like, 'This is really fun.'” After that, “slowly I started to get back into it” and began training a few days a week before going to the World Rowing Masters Regatta in September. The friend and she were part of a four-person team that won the quad event for their age group.

‘Like magic’: When her friend in high school was pitching the idea of rowing to Simmons and when she herself was encouraging her teenage daughter to row, both described a phenomenon that takes place on the water. “Once everybody is in sync together, it's like magic, like the boat is sort of floating,” Simmons says. “You feel the boat every time your oar comes out of the water, and you're pushing at the end of the stroke. You can feel the bubble, sort of running underneath the boat. You can hear it, and it’s … like magic.” Her 15-year-old daughter now rows with Sarasota Crew. “One day, she got into my car, and she was like, ‘The boat just floated,’” Simmons says, noting her daughter had finally experienced the phenomenon. “It’s this magical moment.”