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Craig Mattick: Welcome to another edition of In Play. I'm Craig Mattick. For over 10 years, he had the title of the Fastest Man in High School Track in South Dakota. He had to be convinced though to participate in track, and when he committed to running track, nobody could beat him. His senior year, still one of the all-time greats in South Dakota high school track history. Played football and ran some track in college, and today he's a doctor. In fact, he's watching his son light up the track as well. He's the Yankton Buck, the Augie Viking, Chris Fischer. And Chris, welcome to In Play.
Chris Fischer: Thanks for having me, Craig.
Craig Mattick: I did read an article a few years back that you had to be convinced to come out and participate in track. You had other interests at the time. This is about the time you were like 6th grade. So what was it that you had your sights on instead of track, at that time?
Chris Fischer: It was tennis. I had picked up playing tennis kind of late elementary school years into middle school, and a good friend of mine, Ben Anderson, who I always lost to at the city tournament, but we played a lot of tennis together and I really loved the sport. Up until that point I kind of dabbled in playing different sports, soccer, football and track. And while I liked those, tennis was kind of always my go-to. And coming up through middle school, I ran some track, I had some decent success, but when I started my freshman year of high school, I was pretty convinced that I was going to have tennis as my primary focus in the spring. And I decided to also try to go out for the track team, but figured that probably at that point didn't see myself as the fastest person even in town there. There were a lot of other great athletes, Chris Johnson, Jason Williams, a lot of fast guys. I mean, Yankton was known for big, fast athletes.
And so I never thought I would succeed quite as much in track and field as I would in tennis. And so I went out for tennis and there was a very specific moment I recall when everything kind of changed. So Ray Kooistra, who is a mentor of mine, and to this day when I look back on the coaches that have I think influenced me the most, Ray Kooistra is right up there. But he came over one day while I was at tennis practice, called me over and said, "Hey Fischer, it's time to put that racket down. We need you over in track and field. I've got big plans for you." And that's always stuck in my mind. Big plans for me. And that was my last day as a member of the YHS tennis team.
Craig Mattick: Wow.
Chris Fischer: And I went over and he really kind of brought out, I think the track athlete in me that was probably always there, but just knew... He's one of those guys that knew how to coach individuals. Not just a team or a group of sprinters, but could tailor his methods to each individual. And it just really stuck with me and I became passionate about running from that point on.
Craig Mattick: Well, Jim Miner was the track coach too, I believe at the time. And I think he tried twisting your arm too. Yeah.
Chris Fischer: Yeah, yeah. He also had some influence on me. Ray brought me over and I kind of sat down and talked with both of them. And Jim Miner, very reserved. He was the intellectual coach. Always thinking. I remember being in his calculus class and before Friday football games we would spend part of the class drawing up the plays that we were going to run for the day. So he was a very thoughtful person, but also a great track coach and had a lot of positive influence on me as well.
Craig Mattick: Some athletes are just built for speed. They're not too short, they're not too tall, they got great core strength, they got the strong legs. I've read you have to have fast twitch muscle fibers if you're going to be a pretty good sprinter. Does that describe Chris Fischer back in high school?
Chris Fischer: I think part of it, it's one of those I think cases where in playing pickup games of football or just even racing down the street with my siblings and friends, I always knew that I was a little bit faster than at least the local kids. And I was a pretty skinny kid, maybe a buck 50 through middle school. And then of course once you get to high school and you start playing football and hit the weight room, I really started to recognize that, "You know what? I can put on muscle pretty well, and I can hang with a lot of these other guys that used to really kind of intimidate me." And so once I kind of started to put on that muscle, that's when I started to recognize I think some of that athletic ability that I didn't realize that I had. I don't know if your description fits me to a T, but obviously something worked out right. There was something, I was blessed to be part of the genetic pool that I'm in.
Craig Mattick: Correct. When you're looking at the starting blocks, that is such a key part of certainly the hundred and the 200, how much time did you spend getting better out of the blocks? And was that something that you really, really had to work on?
Chris Fischer: Not enough time. I tell you, the blocks, I think of all of the things in sports that put the most fear, or I shouldn't say fear, frustration into me, it was getting into those blocks. I was fairly tall for a sprinter at just over 6'3, and blocks were kind of the bane of my existence in track and field. And for a long time I had the hardest time getting it right. And that's where again, kind of Ray Kooistra really came in. At one point what he would do is he would stand about 10 meters out, and he would hold a pole vault, and he would hold it just at the height that he thought was right. He said, "Fischer, I want you to come out of the blocks, and I do not want your head to come up above this pole until you pass it. If you do, I'm going to whack you with it."
And so we spent a lot of time in my junior and senior year where it became evident that I think I had what it took to kind of take things to the next level. And so yeah, I really drilled down at that point. But even then, the blocks, I always just felt a little constrained in there. And I remember at the state track meet in my senior year in the 100-meter finals, coming out of the blocks and looking up and seeing nothing but the rear ends of seven other guys and thinking, "Man, I really blew it this time." And I was fortunate enough that I had that kind of finishing speed to get me there. So I've put a lot of work into it. It was kind of hit or miss, I wasn't the most consistent out of the blocks. So while the hundred I think was a decent race for me, I did much better in the two and four, simply because you don't rely quite as much, particularly in the four, coming out of the blocks,
Craig Mattick: All those races. How many times were you disqualified trying to beat the gun?
Chris Fischer: Fortunately, never. I was very fortunate. That's another thing that scared me so much. There was a heat before you where someone would get a false start, and so that would kind of stick me in those blocks.
Craig Mattick: So how did you become faster?
Chris Fischer: Again, I think a lot of it was obviously there's going to be a genetic component to it, but I really enjoyed running. There's something about the freedom of just going out there and kind of just giving it the all physically. And so I did things like hill training, overspeed work, resistance training. I picked up a book that was written by a coach out of Oregon, and it had workouts specifically designed for sprinters. So I started to read into some of that and did some of my own research early on.
And then guys like Ray Kooistra who I think at the time we were kind of ahead of the curve in regards to training sprinters, we did parachute resistance training, sled training, biometrics, so a lot of explosive workouts to kind of help train us, especially that overspeed workout, which you have to be careful with running downhills and things like that. But he incorporated that into our training, and I tell you, I ran with a lot of guys who over the course of the three or four years we ran together, there was a significant change in foot speed. So I think a lot of it really had to do with just the coaching at that time. The guys knew what they were doing with us.
Craig Mattick: Well, you've benefited from watching, what, three boys who've been sprinters. Have their training been any different than what you had back when you were at Yankton High?
Chris Fischer: A little bit, but I'll tell you nowadays, I look at the training that kids do, and one thing that had been really helpful to us is kind of the off season explosive treadmill work and weightlifting. My boys all went through the Sanford Power system here, and I think benefited greatly from that. They've got great instructors, great trainers. And as a father, I tried to instill some of my methods on them, but of course again, we turned back to the rolling of the eyes, thinking, "Oh you're my dad. The old guy trying to tell us what to do." So I think it was better for me to kind of hand them off and have someone work with them who wasn't me or another family member.
I think they listened more to them and they really kind of adopted that, and that became part of their routine. So I think the intensity of training nowadays with younger athletes, it's much more intense overall than I think what we used to do. As you know, the science has really kind of honed in on designing specific workouts for sports. I mean it's tough for kids overall to excel, I think in multiple sports anymore because you've got that single season and kids are really focusing on one, maybe two sports anymore. And so my boys got... You know? The youngest right now, Griffin, he played soccer in the fall, but otherwise the other two, it was track only.
Craig Mattick: You played football for the Bucks. How much confidence did track give you when it came to playing football, whether you were the running back or even a wide receiver?
Chris Fischer: No, a lot. I was fortunate too. I was a running back and I had a beast of a lead blocker in a guy by the name of Lance Wyff, who was a 250 lbs fullback that ran like a 4.64, 7.40, and he ended up playing tight end up at SDSU. But I do recall my junior year, he was a senior. My job was easy. It was basically I would receive the pitch, get behind him, wait for him to take out three, four, five guys, and then just hit the sideline and go. So that sprinting speed, I had a lot of confidence, but a lot of it also had to do with the fact that I had not only a great lead blocker, but my O line, again, Yankton grows them big, mean, and fast.
Craig Mattick: Yep.
Chris Fischer: They made it easy for me to use that speed.
Craig Mattick: I'm trying to remember your senior year, didn't you guys go undefeated? Were you 12-0 that year?
Chris Fischer: We didn't. That was actually... So I have two younger twin brothers. So the subsequent year after I graduated, they went 24-0 and won back to back state championships, and that was my younger brothers. So yeah, they always rubbed that one in my face.
Craig Mattick: Well, who kept getting in your way even to get to the dome?
Chris Fischer: So my junior year we were undefeated and had a great season. And then we... You know? First round of the playoffs, I think it was, we drew Brandon Valley who was 1-8 and we were 9-0 at the time, and I had injured my knee in the game before and was out that game, and we went on and lost that game. So it was Brandon Valley my junior year, and then my senior year it was O'Gorman.
Craig Mattick: After the football season was over, when did you start getting ready for track? Or were you always had track in the back of your mind and you were doing some sort of training?
Chris Fischer: Track was always in the back of my mind. I always enjoyed running. I had done some cross country in middle school, and I enjoyed just getting out and running on my own, so I'd always been running, sometimes to the point of being a little bit obsessive. I was trying to get in four or five miles every night. I mean there were times I remember I was supposed to meet up with friends or a girlfriend and I'm like, "Got to get that run in first.".
Craig Mattick: Wow.
Chris Fischer: And so I think it was always in the back of my mind. There were times after football practice where I'd just go out for a light run just to kind of relax. So yeah, I've always run and I think that that was always in the back of my mind, regardless of what season I was in.
Craig Mattick: It's your junior year, it's 1993, and you're chosen to participate in the Howard Wood, Dakota Relays Boys Special 400. What was that conversation like when you were asked to be a part of that?
Chris Fischer: My first thought was, "Dear God, what have they gotten me into?" That was a case where my coaches were more confident in me than I was in myself. And I looked at some of those names, Ryan Morris, who's now the AD down in Yankton, and he and I were competitors back and forth. Aaron Hamrick, who I played college football with. I mean these were guys that I had seen at other track meets who were amazing runners. And so I was nervous, but at the same time very honored, and it was one of those things that as I got closer to the event, those nerves kind of started to give way, and I thought, "You know what? I think I deserve to be here." My coach just kind of talked me into that and it ended up being a great race. I mean horrible weather, but I think of all of the track and field memories from high school, that one is the one that really sticks out amongst all of the rest of them as a very original experience.
Craig Mattick: 50.29 was your time. You won by just over a second, you beat Jim Healy of Canastota. Jeremiah Smith from Hot Springs was also in that race, and then there was a kid from Le Mars, Iowa as well. Did you get out of the blocks quick on that race?
Chris Fischer: Well, I don't know if you remember that, that year. We had to run that race in two heats in lanes five through eight.
Craig Mattick: Oh, that was the rain. The rain, the-
Chris Fischer: That was the rain, yes.
Craig Mattick: Oh.
Chris Fischer: I remember getting in the blocks, and because I had lane four, I had the fastest time coming in, but that suddenly turned into lane eight. So I'm out there on an island, as you know lane eight in the 400, you're way out there. I remember looking up at the lights getting in the blocks, and the rain's coming in sideways and I'm thinking "This is absolutely ridiculous." And I honestly don't remember a whole lot about the race other than the gun going off, the rain in my face, and then coming across that finish line. I don't recall the crowd noise. I just remember trying to see through the rain and the wind, but yeah, it was a heck of an event.
Craig Mattick: Lanes one, two, and three weren't used because they were underwater. Right?
Chris Fischer: Yep.
Craig Mattick: And it just rained the whole time. It was a strange... Did you have the first heat or the second heat?
Chris Fischer: I was in the first heat.
Craig Mattick: Okay, so you didn't know exactly what time you needed to win the race?
Chris Fischer: No, I didn't.
Craig Mattick: That's tough.
Chris Fischer: It is, yeah. It is. And that was the first time I had been out in lane eight for an individual event. And you just feel so lonely, when that gun goes off, you start running, you have no idea where the other people are. I just kept listening for footsteps between the patterning of the rain to see if I could hear anybody coming up on me.
Craig Mattick: Well, coming up on your senior year at Yankton, did you do anything special to get ready for your senior year, like that summer, prepping for football and knowing that track was coming up down the road?
Chris Fischer: Not necessarily specifically for track. I think we had a good core group of athletes from the football team who made it a point to work out regularly together, not just going through plays, but hitting the gym, doing wind sprints. And so I think it was just, again, growing up in a small town, you get this small group of individuals that were really tight-knit. And not only were we in the backfield together playing football, but we were all on the relay team. And so we just kind of throughout the course of the year, worked hard in every single sport. And I think that it's like cross-training. I think there are a lot of things about the other sports that help you get ready for track and field, but it wasn't necessarily specifically preparing for that senior year of track. I'd had success the year before, but I wasn't thinking that far ahead at that point. I was really kind of focusing on football, going into the summer and fall of my senior year.
Craig Mattick: Well, that special year for you in 1994 in track, your senior year at State Track, you win four gold medals. You win the hundred, the 200, the 400, and of course a member of the four by two relay. Your timing in the hundred though, 10-5. It's still number three all time. In fact, the top 10 all time marks now in the 100-meter dash in South Dakota, it is separated by just over a 10th of a second. Just over a 10th of a second. Jaden Guthmiller of Spearfish, by the way, holds the mark. Did it three years ago at 10.45. And I know your son is right there. Griffin is right there at number 10. He's right behind you, he's trying to beat your record there, dad.
Chris Fischer: Yes, he is.
Craig Mattick: He's got a couple of more times to try, right?
Chris Fischer: He does. He does. And his older brother is a hundredth of a second ahead of him at Lincoln. And so those two are really... They're eyeing one another. I'll tell you, his older brother is probably his biggest fan. If anyone's going to take the record from him at Lincoln, he's of course happy that it's his own brother, but it's just amazing that you can have a cluster of sprinters that are all that close. In my mind, I play through, what would it have been like to run against some of these kids nowadays, and frankly, I probably would've been very scared of some of them because they're much bigger than I was. I mean, I look at the build on some of these kids nowadays and they're very intimidating. Just big, fast, and strong, but so many amazing athletes. And part of what I still love about track and field, even if my kids aren't running, just going and watching these young athletes who are so gifted, and it just blows my mind that every year at Howard Wood records are broken. At what point will it stop? It's unbelievable to me.
Craig Mattick: I know. Every year we think, "Yeah, this will be the last year, we're going to have multiple records," but it just keeps coming.
Chris Fischer: Yep, they keep knocking them down
Craig Mattick: Your 200 time, 21.3. It's now eighth all time, the top 10 all time in the 200-meter dash. They're now separated by just over three tenths of a second. And then in the 400-meter dash, you had the time when you graduated, but now 10 faster times are posted. I guess that's not a surprise after 20 years. Your time was 48.76 and the record now is about a second faster. A kid from Brandon Valley did it three years ago.
Chris Fischer: Yeah.
Craig Mattick: So it's still even after all this time, a hundred, 200, 400, there's not a lot of separation from the first to the 10th best.
Chris Fischer: No. Yeah, that's amazing to me. It's impressive. I mean, again, I think how much faster can these kids get, and then you see someone pop one off and you're like, "Wow, that is impressive."
Craig Mattick: Which race was your favorite?
Chris Fischer: At the end of the day, I think it was probably the 400. It was the race you hated to start, but loved to finish, and I think if you can find an athlete that truly enjoys doing that, you're pretty lucky. But for me, I had a little more time. It wasn't just the mad rush of the hundred where if you come out of the blocks wrong... You know? You're talking 10, sometimes hundreds of a second. In the 400, you've got a little bit of time to make things up. And so for me, it was always a little bit more of a relaxed race, because that first 200 you could kind of cruise through, try to get loose and then hit it hard for that last 200. So that kind of strategy, if you will, in a sprint event, I really loved that. I always felt like there was always an opportunity to get it back if you didn't get a great start.
Craig Mattick: It's fall of '94 and you're now at Augustana College. I mean, you're playing football and running track. What was that decision like, before you graduated from Yankton High? Was Augie always there, being able to do both?
Chris Fischer: It came down literally to a coin flip. Coach Stiegelmeier from SDSU who recruited me, great guy, and to this day, one of those coaches that I just have the utmost respect for and has had amazing success up at SDSU, he and Denny Moeller had been recruiting me, and it really came down to Augustana versus SDSU at the time, who were in the same conference, the NCC conference. And the night I had to make a decision, I literally took a coin and flipped it, and it came up Augie, and that's how I ended up going to Augustana. At the time, I really hadn't thought... You know? I was going to go there to play football. That was what my scholarship was for, and I thought maybe I'll consider walking on, on track and field, we'll see how that goes. I think eventually I was going to run track and field at either place, wherever I went. But yeah, the fate had Augustana written in the stars for me, so that's where we ended up.
Craig Mattick: Yeah, your freshman year, you're number two on the team and running. You had 265 yards, nine catches for 137. Augie though had Heath Rylance as quarterback. You knew they were going to throw the ball more a lot than running the ball at Augie at that time.
Chris Fischer: I did. Yeah. And coming in and talking with Denny Moeller. They had a good running back in Chad Shuff, a kid from Iowa who was, I think at the time, their leading rusher in Iowa. And I saw him, and he's very different from me as far as build. I was this kind of taller, lanky, he was 5'10 and just built like a brick house. He was unbelievable. And so I thought, you know what? I don't know how much playing time I'm going to get behind this guy, but Danny Moeller reassured me. He's like, "We're going to use you kind of in that wide position. We'll put you in the backfield and we'll put in some schemes for you to get out wide, use that speed over the top and put you one-on-one with linebackers, and use that matchup." And so I was very fortunate just to get some playing time my freshman year out of that backfield, but they did tailor some of that offense to kind of take advantage of my assets outside.
Craig Mattick: Well, things were better your sophomore year, you're the leading rusher on the team, almost 500 yards. You're the number three receiver, just over 400 yards. Pat Graham now is the quarterback for Augustana. He threw for what, 2,900 yards. So the offense really wasn't that much different from the year before with Heath Rylance, was it?
Chris Fischer: No. No, it wasn't. And again, I played with some great quarterbacks. Heath was amazing. And then to have a guy like Pat come in and set passing records, I mean, for me it was a lot of fun. I liked the running back position. I wasn't obviously carrying the ball as much as I did in high school, but as a running back in that offense, you were always doing something. If you weren't running the ball, you were picking up the blitz, you were going out wide. So it was a very active and complex offense, and it didn't bother me so much not being kind of the epicenter of the running back. I just enjoyed playing with the guys that I played with, and the complexity of the schemes that were put in to really take advantage of, I think what we had in great quarterbacks and wide receivers.
Craig Mattick: I think you got a chance to play in the old Metrodome that year. You took on Minnesota State, Mankato. Why did they play that game in the dome?
Chris Fischer: I don't remember the exact reason, but I mean, what an experience for us as a Division II college. I think there was nothing scheduled that weekend. And so maybe they thought, "Hey, let's get these kids in there and let them have at it." And it was an amazing venue. Just because you'd seen it on TV, I'd been to maybe one game there before, but to be in there playing on that field was really special.
Craig Mattick: Well, it was a high scoring game. 55-38. The Mavericks won that game. What do you remember about that game? Indoors.
Chris Fischer: Not a whole lot other than just being impressed by the venue. Yeah, it was just a lot of fun.
Craig Mattick: Those two years playing football at Augie, you're also running track in the North Central Conference. What success did you have, running at Augustana?
Chris Fischer: I got some very decent success. My freshman year I was fortunate enough to be part of a 4x4 relay team that still, I think now holds the indoor record for the conference in the 4x4. I ran with three other great 400 meter guys, a guy named Tobony Gagne from Zimbabwe, who was just an amazing sprinter, a guy named John Shelva, who was a 400-meter hurdler from Norway, and then a freak of an athlete by the name of Tommy Dow, who I think went to the Olympic trials in the 800. And I was the quote fat kid on the team. I was 222 lbs football player, and these guys, I mean, and I was the slow one running 47s. These guys were unbelievable. Tommy is one of these guys that we would anchor him and he would consistently put in a 45 second split.
So I was just happy to be part of that 4x4 team. I didn't have as much success in the open hundred. I became more of a 200 and 400 meter guy, but got to run with some amazing athletes and we got to go to nationals that year with our arch nemesis, the Coyotes from USD, and they had a guy by the name of Ryan [inaudible 00:25:08] who anchored their four by four who was an absolute stud. So we really were kind of neck and neck with USD and went back and forth and ran into them all the time at conference meets and at Nationals.
Craig Mattick: You played about half the football games, your junior and senior years. Were there injuries involved with that?
Chris Fischer: There were, yeah. My junior year, unfortunately, I was having, I think what was going to be probably the best season of my college career at running back. And we came up against a pretty feisty NDSU team at homecoming, and I had racked up just over a hundred yards by halftime rushing and come out in first play from scrimmage. In the second half, I get stuck in a pile up and ended up partially tearing my ACL. And so that took me out for the rest of that season, unfortunately, and we ended up winning that game, so that was the plus, but my season had come to an end there.
So I went back to the drawing books and spoke with the coaches at that point. I played running back for three years, and actually there had been some interest from some scouts who I think were kind of drawn to my size and my speed and wondered what could I do potentially at wideout. And so in the off season I talked with the coaching staff and decided, "You know what? Let's put you out at Wideout for your senior year and just kind of see how that plays out. And in the meantime, you'll rehab your knee because you may get some looks from some of the pro scouts." And so I switched over to wide receiver for my senior year.
Craig Mattick: And how did that go? You only played six games that year.
Chris Fischer: I did, yep. I ended up having another injury, this time it was a groin strain that I had later on in the season. It was just a very different position. In high school it's one thing to switch around positions, but in college with an offense as I think complex as Augustana, it's tough to go from that running back position out to being a wide receiver. The first few games were great, I'd use my speed, get deep, but teams get wise to that. They say, "We know this guy on the outside has some speed, we're going to play off him," and you really can't change up your routes a whole lot for fear of interfering with the play. And so it was a little tougher for me, I think, to get a handle on the position and technique. But at that point, the injuries were starting to rack up, and so I kind of saw the writing on the wall in regards to my football career.
Craig Mattick: Did you kind of stay injury free during your high school career?
Chris Fischer: I did for the most part. I had an injury my junior year, actually, I remember a guy by the name of Jason Sutherland, a great athlete from Watertown. So he was the one who was on a kick return actually. He came in and ended up hitting my knee. I mean, I'm not blaming him, it wasn't his fault, it's football, but I injured my knee, but that was really the only I would quote, quote, unquote, "serious injury" I had during my senior year, and I came back from that just fine. Again, it was a partial ACL tear, didn't have to have it reconstructed, so I think I was lucky it took four months of rehab and I was good to go. But yeah, for the most part, injury free during high school. But college, you know that college speed and football, that's a whole different beast.
Craig Mattick: Yeah, it certainly is. If you had to do it over again, do you think you would have stayed with one sport in college, or done it again?
Chris Fischer: Yeah, I debate that a lot. Would I just do track and field and try to avoid those injuries, but I look back on my time playing football, and it was such an enriching experience. The coaches, the teammates, I learned a lot playing football. So I guess the short answer would be I would probably do it again, simply because the experience was exceptionally valuable to me.
Craig Mattick: Hundred, 200, 400 meter dash, great success, no field events. How about long jump or the triple jump? Did you ever think about doing that?
Chris Fischer: I did try the high jump, and then Ray Kooistra said, "Well, you ever thought about maybe Heptathlon or Decathlon? Let's bring you over and try a pole vault." I tried pole vault once and it scared me so much I said, "You know what? I want to stick to running in the straight line, maybe a curve." And yeah, I never took to the field events. I had enough success, I think in the other events, and you're limited to four events at the state meet, so you put me where you can score points. We had a lot of big linemen, like guys like Lance Wyff that could throw that shot or discus, so they didn't need me so much in the field events, and we also had some great jumpers.
Craig Mattick: After Augie, you head to Indiana for radiology school. What was that like? What were you trying to accomplish after college?
Chris Fischer: Yeah, so I finished up Augustana, I got into medical school at USD, put in my four years there, and then matched in radiology. I had been thinking orthopedic surgeon for obvious reasons, and I spent a lot of time with guys like Brian Omlett and Bob Van Demark, but really found an interest in radiology and diagnostic imaging. And so ended up applying for that, and I went to Indiana University who at the time had the largest radiology residency program in the country, they were taking 16 residents a year, and absolutely loved my experience out there.
It was a great time both professionally and personally. I had a young family at the time, moved out there with two young boys, had a third while we were out there, and had an absolute blast. But I think the plan always was to come back to South Dakota. We'd come back during my breaks and this just felt like home. We love the area, my wife is from Sioux Falls originally, growing up in Yankton, all of our family was here or around the Midwest, so the plan was to always come back, but had a great five years out in Indianapolis doing my radiology and nuclear medicine training.
Craig Mattick: So what does that do for high school athletics today? How does that benefit?
Chris Fischer: Sports medicine. Like this week, for instance, I'm on the musculoskeletal radiology service. So any and all injuries that require diagnostic imaging, whether it's MRI, CT, x-ray, ultrasound, that's what we do. So we interpret those images, we have dedicated musculoskeletal radiologists who are specially trained, fellowship trained to do the injections, doing things like arthrograms, to look for internal pathology, for sports injuries. And we have a very robust sports medicine program, and work closely with our orthopedic team. And so we see a lot of athletes come through. In every season you kind of have an idea of what injuries to expect when they come across your workstation, your reading workstation, but I find it very rewarding that I can utilize this skillset to help care for patients who are passionate about athletics.
Craig Mattick: Sounds like you'd become a good coach for track.
Chris Fischer: Yeah. I would love that. In the back of my mind, there's always this dream scenario that when I hang up the white coat and stethoscope, there's maybe a biology teacher/track coach job out there waiting for me. But we'll see.
Craig Mattick: Yankton High School Athletic Hall of Fame in 2011. What does that mean to you, Chris?
Chris Fischer: That was something that I always dreamt of and wondered if I would be considered for that. I remember seeing the pictures of the former athletes, student athletes who had kind of made the wall of fame at Yankton High School. Great names. And when I got the phone call, I could say it was one of those times in my life where I was truly honored to be considered amongst the greats to come out of Yankton, because as a kid growing up, I remember the names and the athletes and looking up to them and thinking, "My gosh, I'll never be like that, I won't be thought of like that." So it was a huge honor and something that I'm very proud of to this day. And it's been great to see other athletes after me that I had the privilege of playing with, subsequently being named or inducted into that Hall of Fame. So it means a lot to me. It really does.
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