Dr. Dave Olson, Director of the Sports Medicine Fellowship, on What Makes the Program Special

After serving as associate program director since 2011, Dave Olson, MD, stepped into the role of director of the Sports Medicine Fellowship in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health in June 2026. He has been involved in the fellowship program as a faculty doctor since 2003. We spoke with Dr. Olson about the University of Minnesota’s Sports Medicine Fellowship to get his take on what makes it unique, what future fellows can look forward to – and what he loves most about his work.

What stands out about the Sports Medicine Fellowship program?

The thing that I like most about our program here at the University of Minnesota is the people. I've worked with the faculty for years. We have former fellows that have stayed on as faculty with our program. For our core faculty, educating the future leaders in sports medicine and our fellows is what we strive for. It's what gives us energy and it's what makes what we do fun every day.

What have been some of your favorite events in the last few years?

I love a lot of what we do. I think the variety of what we do in sports medicine is the cool thing. The patient relationships we have and working with people in the clinic – getting to see them through their injuries and their return to sport is an amazing piece of what we do. I love the coverage, too: working with the Vikings or Gophers basketball or US soccer, traveling, taking care of these athletes, and being part of the team is probably some of my favorite stuff.

What words would you use to describe the program?

A word that I would use to describe our program is family. We're a really tight-knit group of people with common goals on educating future fellows and our current fellows. So, family is a huge thing. 

Another word is compassionate. We're compassionate for our patients. We're compassionate for our athletes. For the other people that we work with in sports medicine, you work as such a team with athletic trainers, physical therapists, coaching staff. We have compassion for everyone that we work with to try to make it the safest possible environment for our athletes in the end.

What kind of travel have you done with the program? Can you give us one example?

What we do in sports medicine on the coverage side is not just covering games and events right here in the Twin Cities; you also travel a lot with teams. So for me, I do a lot of coverage. I had a Vikings travel trip in the NFL that we went to Dublin, Ireland, and played a game. For the first time ever, we were the guinea pigs for it. The first time ever in the NFL, we played the next week in London. That back-to-back trip was amazing. It provided a lot of different challenges.

From the sports medicine side of things, we had to pack and bring everything that we would need for two weeks. We had to have meetings with local people in both Ireland and in the London area to make sure that we had emergency action plans set if anything happened to any of our athletes. There were cool challenges with that. 

For our fellows and myself, working with our teams at the University of Minnesota and the University of St. Thomas, there is a lot of travel just for football game weekends to different places where those same things come into play. You have to know what your emergency action plan is. You get to know what the options are for athlete care in the area that you're going to be in and the city that you're going to be in – and then implement that on game day.

Can you tell us about the experience of teaching or having the fellows learn ultrasound?

Ultrasound training is a big piece of almost every sports medicine fellowship, but ours involves learning about both diagnostic ultrasound and procedural ultrasound. We have ultrasound units pretty much everywhere we go, whether it's in our clinics, in our training rooms, or on the sideline to take good care of our athletes. 

We have a lot of different ways that we go about ultrasound training. A lot of it's day-to-day. In our clinics and in our training rooms, we're constantly using ultrasound and the fellows get to learn on the go with that on a continuity basis, which I think is very important. 

We also have ongoing ultrasound didactics. We have a former fellow, Dr. Kirk Scoffield, who teaches continuity weekly with our fellows. They go and work with him and take it to a very high level. Everyone gets up to speed at the start of fellowship year, but then they take it to that next level as far as their diagnostic skills. 

But it's “go time” right from the start of fellowship. We're doing ultrasound-guided injections all the time in our clinics and utilizing ultrasound also from a diagnostic standpoint in the clinical and training room setting.

Can you expand a little bit on where else you might use ultrasound during a typical week?

On a typical week, ultrasound has uses in a lot of different areas. So, first would just be educationally weekly – practicing using the ultrasound machine to work on diagnostic ultrasound of the different parts of the body in the clinic. We utilize ultrasound for diagnosing injuries in our patients and athletes while also using it for injections. 

Whether it's hips, shoulders, joints, or different things like that, we are utilizing ultrasound all the time in the clinic for those procedures. And then also in the training room diagnostically, we'll utilize that for diagnosing injuries as well as sometimes injections in the training room. We’ll also use it on the sideline for quick looks, ruling out certain injuries. Even on the sideline, we have portable handheld units that we can use in that fashion as well.

What would you say are some of the highlights of doing your job every day?

I have a job that I just love. My highlights are hanging out with our fellows and teaching the residents and medical students. Fellows do a lot of that as well in our program. That's always fun. It's just a learning atmosphere for everyone. 

Another highlight is game coverage. I love being out there on the field at the court traveling and covering games. Being part of the team is a joy for me day-to-day. We also have a blast in the clinic. We have busy clinics where you see a lot of different things. You work with a lot of high-level athletes from professional sports, college, high school, all the way down to the weekend warriors. 

I love the variety of the week, whether it's being in the clinic, training room, at a game, traveling, at a meeting, and learning more about sports medicine. There are just so many different things that we get to do. But in the end, for me, the fun part is hanging out with our fellows and our faculty and having a good time doing what we do in sports medicine.

What would you say are some of the most unique aspects of the Sports Medicine Fellowship program?

In fellowship training, there's a good, strong base wherever you go with a lot of different things, whether it's team coverage or clinical – ultrasound and procedures.

Also unique about our clinic and our fellowship program is the faculty. We have a diverse faculty that have a lot of varied interests. They've studied in a lot of different areas within the country. We have people that are experts in hockey. We have people that are experts with football, soccer, and more. There’s a lot of different areas and diversity. We arguably have one of the biggest leaders in Dr. Suzanne Hecht, who’s strong in a lot of women's health and bone health issues. We have people that are doing high-level coverage of teams. So that is what's unique for us. 

We have such amazing faculty who are the highest level of experts across the country – across the world – at things that they do. That is something you get at the University of Minnesota that you don't get everywhere else.

Any other highlights that you want to mention?

We've been very thoughtful on who we hire as sports medicine faculty and who the fellows work with here at the University of Minnesota to give them the best experience. We want our fellows to have a great variety in their experience too. 

Some people come in and they know what they want to do. Maybe they want to be a college football team doctor or something like that. But it's still important to see all the other things that you can learn about during a fellowship year. 

Sometimes people come in and they don't know what they want to do. And that's where our program is great too, giving you experience across the board. You'll cover teams and sports at all different levels. You'll see things clinically and procedurally and be very ready to go out into the sports medicine world and be that future leader in sports medicine and be well equipped to practice anywhere you end up.