Love of the Games

A love of sports led Dr. Anthony DeGiacomo ’04 to Dominican, and later a love of sports led him to fellowship in sports medicine at the famed Kerlan Jobe Orthopedic Clinic.

Not only did Anthony, now an orthopedic surgeon in Boston, gain an in-depth experience in surgery for sports related injuries, he also was able to serve as assistant team physician to many college and professional teams in the Los Angeles area, including the Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Kings, USC Football Team, Anaheim Ducks and the Los Angeles Sparks of the Women’s National Basketball Association.

DeGiacomo was recruited to play basketball at Dominican in the athletics department.

“The opportunity to play basketball in college, coupled with the environment of small study body and location within California, won me over,” he recalls.

However an injury during his freshmen year turned his focus from basketball to science.

Luckily, an influential faculty mentor, former science chair Dr. Sibdas Ghosh in the School of Health and Natural Sciences, helped him with the answer.

“He introduced me to undergraduate research and to summer research programs, DeGiacomo recalls. “He confirmed my goal of going to medical school and becoming a doctor.”

His work in the lab at Dominican helped DeGiacomo secure several summer research programs – the Minority Medical Education Program at Case Western Reserve, the Stanford Summer Research Program, and the Harvard Summer Honors Undergraduate Research Program.

After graduating from Dominican, and while applying for medical school, he conducted a year in the research lab of Dr. Nicholas Denko in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Stanford University.

DeGiacomo attended medical school at the University of California, San Francisco. During medical school, he completed a combined program with the UC Berkeley School of Public Health to obtain a Master's Degree of Health and Medical Sciences. After medical school, he attended Boston University for residency in Orthopedic Surgery. During this residency program, he completed an additional year as a research fellow performing basic science studies on bone healing and remodeling.

That helped pave the way for DeGiacomo to earn the fellowship to the Kerlan Jobe Orthopedic Clinic, a preeminent center for research and education in orthopedics and sports medicine. The clinic has gained national and international recognition as pioneers in the field of sports medicine and has had a profound effect on the training and exercise routines of professional athletes in every sport.

DeGiacomo is one of a number of former Dominican students who graduated in the mid-2000s now either practicing medicine or involved in medical research.

• Dr. Rocky Chavez ’05 is a family medicine doctor in his hometown of Bakersfield.
• Dr. Amanda Shepherd ‘05 is a hospitalist at the University of Washington Medical Center.
• Dr. Marcus Williams ’05 is an emergency medicine doctor at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Leandro.
• Dr. Linh Nguyen '05  is a pediatrician at MemorialCare Medical Group in Long Beach.
• Dr. Tami Turner '05 is a Nutrition and Health Behavior Research scientist at the University of Arizona.
• Dr. Faith-Hall Glenn ’06 is a molecular scientist technical assistant at CeMM, the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
• Dr. Ofek Bar-Ilan Devinney ’06 is the Senior Product Marketing Manager at Domtar Personal Care (Baby) Owned Brands and Partner Brands.
• Dr. Sharon Castellanos '06 is a maternal fetal medicine NP in the Kaiser Permanente Medical Group in Santa Clara.
• Dr. Karen Griffith '06 is an optometrist at Westside Optometry in Petaluma.
• Dr. Cathryn Halford-Cook '06 is assistant professor for USF's RN Transition-to-Practice program.
• Dr. Kevin Hassler '07 is a dentist in Pismo Beach.
• Dr. Seiha Thorng '07 is a podiatrist for Sutter Health in Stockton.
• Dr. Monika Alas-Segura ’08 is a pediatrician in Los Angeles and an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.
• Dr. Cherrelle Jones-Nguyen '08 is a resident physician at University Hospitals in Cleveland.
• Dr. Alma Martinez Torres '08 is an optometrist at Tom F. Mihok Optometry in Oakdale.