Bolkan monitors pulse on, off field

Timbers’ defender mulls dual career in medicine and soccer

By steve brandon

The Portland Tribune, May 8, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

With love for the outdoors as well as the indoors, Timbers defenseman Scott Bolkan is thinking about being a pro soccer player and a prospective doctor.

©2008 DAVID GONZALES / STANFORD ATHLETICS

If their usually stout interior defense ever starts to look sick, the Portland Timbers can call on the potential future doctor they have in the house.

Scott Bolkan, the Timbers’ youngest defender (and youngest player with the squad), is considering a combo career –pro soccer and medical school.

The 22-year-old South Salem High graduate recently earned his human biology degree at Stanford, where he starred in soccer for the Cardinal.

“It was definitely a dream of mine to play professional soccer,” he says, “so I told myself that if the opportunity came, I’d take it.”

Bolkan wasn’t drafted by Major League Soccer, but he got a tryout with the Timbers and made the most of it, earning a spot on coach and General Manager Gavin Wilkinson’s veteran-laden team.

Bolkan practices with the Timbers in the morning, then goes to work at Oregon Health & Science University. He’s a research assistant in a behavioral neuroscience lab.

“I’m not sure what type of medicine I’d like to go into. It’s a ways away,” he says.

But he’s thought about trying to do both – med school and soccer –at the same time.

“There was a guy at Stanford who got drafted by the San Francisco 49ers and managed to do both,” he says.

Bolkan’s father, Steve, is a retired chemist and his mother, Marlene, is a retired postmaster.

At Stanford, Bolkan pulled down a 3.65 GPA while earning all-Pac 10 honors last year, starting for 3 1/2 seasons and being named to the all-Pac-10 academic team as a sophomore, junior and senior.

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