Margie Olivares

Like most meetings since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, two former University of the Incarnate Word student-athletes sit in front of their computers catching up, asking each other how school is going and if the pools in their area are open yet. Both their lives revolved around the pool. Both are in physical therapy school. And both have had their lives and education altered by the pandemic.

“In PT school, you have to study the way that you train for a sport,” said Beau Fusilier.

Fusillier and Rachel Rosolowski were student-athletes on the swimming and synchronized swimming teams, respectively, at UIW. Fusilier is now in an accelerated program at the University of Mary Hardin Baylor, and Rosolowski is in her second year at Cal State Long Beach.

When the pandemic began, Fusilier was in the middle of his spring break. The school extended spring break to allow the professors to transition their material online. Rosolowski was still taking classes, and Cal State rushed to finish a few labs before switching to online. The transition at both locations was smooth at first, but there were also complications without the added labs.

“The first week I was like ‘this is kind of cool’, but motivation lasted about a week,” said Fusilier.

“It became really easy to get distracted. The visualization part of [learning] basically moved to lecture intense and looking at imaging made it a lot harder to learn versus the cadaver lab.”

Still there were some advantages to the online learning.

“There are things that are better,” said Rosolowsi. “I can listen to the [pre-recorded] lectures at the speed and time that I want. However, you had to work harder to learn the material because they pretty much stopped our labs and the labs are what help concrete the material.”

Having to balance an intense schedule as a student-athlete – one that consisted of classes, competitions, practices and extra curriculars – primed both Fusilier and Rosolowski to be able to juggle schedules and use their time wisely.

“You have to be consistent and you can’t really take time off,” said Fusilier. “My afternoon and morning times that were dedicated to sports are now transitioned into the hours that I spend studying a variety of courses.”

“Transitioning into grad school, I thought ‘there’s so much work, I just don’t know how I am going to keep up with it,’” Rosolowski chimed in. “[A former UIW teammate] reminded me that ‘You were an athlete, you were in SAAC, you were in theatre. You are going to be fine; you just have to figure how to balance it.’”

For Rosolowski, being a student-athlete helped prepare her, but so did her classes, like functional anatomy with Dr. Reid Fisher.

“Dr. Fisher really pushed me to ask for help and ask for the ‘why’ and I really carried that forward. Struggling in that class has helped me in my struggle now because I am not scared to ask for help.”

Still, with the pandemic, a push for telehealth (virtual appointments) has increased and become an integral part of their education.

“We have had to write papers on telehealth and in the exercise physiology class, we had to develop exercise videos and practice doing them with a partner in place of a patient,” Rosolowski said. “I think even if the pandemic isn’t a reality, telehealth could become a thing. There’s something so convenient and efficient about being able to do things online. Especially for patients that have to get a service or a family member to drive them to therapy.”

Despite the challenges that came with transitioning into online learning during a pandemic, the adversities have also prepared them for a career in physical therapy and the new normal. 

“The education has prepared us for a career if [the pandemic] ever occurs again, or if it is still a thing by the time, I graduate come December,” said Fusilier. “I feel like I won’t be nervous going into a job where they are meeting their patients online and doing telehealth.”