Rachel Van Hollebeke’s days start early and end late. Although sometimes it’s the other way around. She’s in the middle of her residency program – that grueling rite of passage for new doctors that involves 80-hour workweeks, sleep deprivation and steep learning curves, all under the 24-hour glare of fluorescent hospital lights. It’s a career’s worth of medical knowledge and practice condensed into the high-speed blur of a few years.

This isn’t the typical retirement plan for most people, much less a world-class athlete who earned 113 international caps for the US women’s national team and played for five different clubs. The list of World Cup-level footballers who went on to become doctors is surely small. Read More