Doctor of Physical Therapy student finds her balance

As many student-athletes learn, it’s a lot easier than it seems to wear down your body in a way that can cause permanent damage. Finding the “balance” between your body and the sport is essential to preventing problems.

Some, like Sophia Howard ’21, learn the hard way, through a serious injury. Fewer decide to use those injuries to help others’ rehabilitation — with the assistance of a few foam rollers, resistance bands, free weights and yes, even balance boards — but that is exactly what Howard hopes to do as part of the first cohort of Decker College’s Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program.

“Working with physical therapists, I really resonated with their values, personalities and beliefs. I felt very at home with them and how they perceived things and talked to people. I really admired and wanted to be like them,” Howard said. “I knew I wanted to help people and when I realized physical therapy would be the best fit, I looked back and thought, ‘Why didn’t I do this from the start?’ It clicked for me — these are the type of people I definitely want to surround myself with every day and they inspire you to be better.”

After 12 years of gymnastics, Howard tore her ACL before her senior year of high school, resulting in three surgeries, two knee reconstructions, a limp and even a consultation with the resident orthopedic surgeon of the Buffalo Bills football team. She ultimately had to retire from the sport, ending a passion she first began at four years old.

Some students would find this enormous life change debilitating. Howard found the good in it, a sign of her perseverance that would continue into the present: She remembers thinking “Okay, at least I can make friends with people at school” with her newfound free time.

Soon, she even found a new passion — in the pool rather than on the mat — through diving, which she first competed in as a lower-impact sport while her injury was healing.

“Transitioning skill-wise was easy because it’s flipping and twisting, but learning to land on your head was just the hardest thing. In gymnastics, you never want to land on your head. So that hurt a lot, learning that,” Howard said, laughing. “I never thought I would love it as much as I did gymnastics, but I was lucky. And my diving coach was great.”

After high school, Howard attended Pace University in Pleasantville, N.Y., for a semester before being accepted into Binghamton University. As an undergraduate, she returned to a diving team. By her senior season (2020-21), she was a team captain and was named the America East Diving Championships’ most outstanding diver of the year, along with several other all-conference honors. She graduated in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences.

Howard credits her health now to the physicians who repaired her knee and her physical therapist. In fact, thanks to him, she pursued the career in the first place.

“The therapist that I worked with for three years, Darrell [Hunink], was the best person I’ve ever met. He is the reason I got interested in PT. He was like a dad, a coach and a friend. I shadowed him after I was done with my therapy, and saw how he was with each patient. He knew all these very deep, nice details about all of them,” Howard said. “He had 12 patients a day and he knew everybody, and it was such a great quality of care. And I thought, ‘Wow, I want to do that for people.’ I owed it all to him, my success with healing.”

For a while, Howard wasn’t sure she was prepared to return to full-time academia. She took a few gap semesters and worked with Lourdes and UHS, considering a career in nursing. She improved her GPA with some online classes and taught middle school divers as a coach in her hometown school district of Maine-Endwell (New York).

When Binghamton announced its physical therapy program was opening, she decided it was time to try. She applied and settled in, advocating for herself the whole way when she heard others had received interviews. In May, she learned she was waitlisted into the program and started to make other plans.

Then, she got a phone call.

“I heard on April 28, on the very last day they said they could possibly reach out to you for a seat. ‘Hi Sophia, we’ve had someone withdraw from the program. We have an empty seat. Would you like it? You need to let me know by May 1,’ which was that Monday! I thought, ‘Oh god, what do I do?’ Howard said. “On Monday, I decided, ‘Okay, I’ve been working for this for six years. I have got to say yes.’ So, I figured it all out.”

Howard and her classmates started their studies in June. If everyone stays on track, they will graduate in 2026 as the program’s first cohort. In the meantime, she’s been learning a new kind of balancing act — how to manage her return to classwork, her work and her life.

The DPT program has taken this into account. Classes — on subjects like anatomy and body mechanics — take place on a static schedule on the sixth floor of the Health Sciences Building, where the professors, most physical therapists themselves, are all accessible. Each student is assigned an academic coach who also helps maintain their health through a rubric called “MEDS” — an acronym for mental health, exercising, diet and sleep — and they are constantly looking for feedback to improve aspects of the program.

In addition to the help from program faculty and staff, Howard is confident the students can work together to make the program the best it can be through camaraderie and shared spirit.

“I’ve always been a team-motivated person from sports. You always try to do your part to help your team, and I think my brain operates like that in real life, too. [The program is] all close-knit; it’s not competitive. Everyone wants each other to do well,” Howard said. “Because we’re the first class, we want to do a really good job of establishing a great culture. There are 35 of us, and I would sit down and have a conversation with any of them. I think they’re all wonderful people.”

Howard looks forward to completing the program and being able to provide the resources she benefited from to those struggling with injuries themselves.

“Not to sound cheesy, but I’m just excited to learn,” Howard said. “The three things I’m always thinking about when pursuing a career are that I want to feel that I’m good at what I do, I want to be excited to go to work every day and I want to feel proud of my work. I think that physical therapy is definitely those three things, and as I get a better understanding and my knowledge grows, I think I can accomplish that in this career path. I can’t wait to actually practice and find out what my niche specialty will be, to see how I can help in this community the best.”