By Vincent Rohrer, USU Athletic Communications

LOGAN, Utah — As college football players across the nation tackle the challenges associated with being a student-athlete, three former Utah State football players are tackling a different challenge—the demanding world of orthopedic surgery.
 
Travis Boman, Chase Nelson, and Chance Parker were teammates during Utah State's memorable 2018 season, when the Aggies went 10-2 and capped the year with a 52-13 win over North Texas in the Gildan New Mexico Bowl, finishing the season ranked No. 22 in the Associated Press poll.

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Fast forward to present day and the trio is part of a different team, pursuing a career as orthopedic surgeons: Nelson is in residency in New York, Parker in Kansas, and Boman at Penn State.
 
The three former Aggies fondly recall the challenges of balancing football and academics at Utah State. Rushing from meals to chemistry labs, cramming in study sessions on the road, and lifting weights before big exams. The line between school and sport was thin. "Sometimes studying happened in the hotel," Parker said. "Ideally, we were studying football but occasionally academics had to hit the road with us too."
 
That balance prepared them well for the rigors of medicine. "Medical school was, in a sense, a little easier because I wasn't so fatigued all the time like I was playing college football," Nelson noted
 
Parker added that residency feels similar to fall camp: "You show up before the sun rises and go hard all day," Parker said. "It's chaotic, and the only way it works is through teamwork and a little bit of excitement."
 
"Everybody plays an important role, whether that's on the field or in surgery," Boman said, highlighting the parallels between the operating room and the football field.
 
That bond of teamwork has carried forward. The three remain close, often sharing encouragement in a group chat. Their professional paths have also overlapped. Parker shadowed Nelson's father, Dr. Keith Nelson, a local orthopedic surgeon and former Aggie, while Nelson stayed with Boman during an interview, and Parker later joined Boman's family for dinner during a rotation.
 
"We're all role models to each other," Boman said. "We worked to get into medical school and pursued excellence on the football field as well—those things are very hard to do concurrently."
 
Their success is especially notable given the competitiveness of the field. Orthopedic surgery ranks as the third-most competitive medical specialty, according to 2024 National Resident Matching Program data. "The magnitude of the academic achievement and work ethic by three people who shared a team, it's a pretty unique thing," Nelson said. "I'd be surprised if any other football team that's not in the Ivy League has something like that to boast of."
 
Roots and Inspiration
Each Aggie found his own motivation for pursuing medicine.
 
For Nelson, it was family. Inspired by his father's career in orthopedics, he saw a profession that combined service, skill, and challenge. "Watching that be my dad's profession, I saw how it was a confluence of a lot of things I valued in life," Nelson said. He described the unique combination of service-oriented work with developing a challenging skill. "It's rewarding and it's rigorous and challenging in the right ways. At the end of the day, it helps people and the people that I get to serve are at the very center of it."
 
His Aggie lineage also runs deep. His grandfather, former USU basketball coach Rod Tueller, and brothers DJ and Riley, who also played football, inspire him to eventually return to Logan. "I'd love to get back and carry on being an Aggie," he said.
 
For Parker, family is equally central. His wife, Christine Van Brocklin, was a USU track and field standout, and together they are raising three children while he completes residency. He also draws strength from the memory of his father, Evan Parker, a USU professor who died in a 2005 vehicle accident during a field trip. A memorial outside the Agricultural Sciences building honors him and the other victims of that crash.
 
"He was, to this day, the best person I've ever met," Parker said. "My hero and my example. Losing him at 10 years old gave me two lifelong commitments: to be an Aggie and to be a dad."
 
Boman's path was shaped by injuries during his playing career, including a torn labrum and tendon tear. His exposure to orthopedics inspired a passion to help others regain physical ability.
 
"Being active is something I've always taken pride in," Boman said. "Orthopedics aligns with that, helping people be as physically capable as possible." The competitive drive from athletics, he added, naturally translates to his field.
 
Boman's athletic background further draws him toward the competitive specialty of orthopedics. "That competitive drive is just something that's innate to me and something that is really never going to go away," he said. "If there's imaging or physical exam findings, they all correlate together, and then you get to go and fix it, which is amazing. And that's one of the reasons why I love orthopedics."
 
Looking Ahead
Despite the challenges and their unique paths, Boman, Nelson and Parker all look forward to opportunities to serve their communities through medicine. Their shared experience at Utah State has fostered a camaraderie that continues to guide them.
 
"The outlook and the opportunity we've carved out, this foundation we've built for ourselves, I think we'd all do it over again," Nelson said. "Even though it's been a long journey to get here collectively."
 
For each of them, the journey from the gridiron to the operating room is more than just a career change, it's a continuation of the values they learned as Aggies: perseverance, discipline, teamwork and service. Whether repairing joints in the operating room or encouraging one another in a late-night group chat, the trio remains united by those lessons.
 
Their stories also serve as a reminder that the impact of athletics extends far beyond wins and losses. What began on the practice fields of Logan has grown into a lifelong bond and a commitment to healing others. And while their days of suiting up for Utah State are behind them, Boman, Nelson, and Parker are still part of a team, one that measures victories not in touchdowns, but in lives changed.