During the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Lori Caloia has faced tough decisions with potentially drastic implications one direction or the other as the medical director for Public Health and Wellness in Louisville, Kentucky. 

On the one hand, if action was delayed, it could mean drastic health consequences, but uninformed actions could create unnecessary economic hardships as well.

Yet, as a former University of Detroit Mercy (UDM) student athlete, Caloia wasn’t just familiar with having to perform under pressure, she was also armed with the educational background to help her make those decisions from an educated and informed position, a release issued recently on the university’s website said.

Caloia, who received her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from UDM before receiving her M.D. degree from Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine, reflected that even as she was pushed to excel in softball, her coaches pushed her to excel more as a student.

"From an athletic standpoint, (former softball) coach Bob Wilkerson was supportive of the student-athlete as a student first and an athlete second, and his encouragement always made me remember why I was there," Caloia said in the release. "It wasn't just to be an athlete, it was to help prepare me for the future. Our team always had one of the highest GPA's in the league and in the country, and that goes back to the encouragement we received to be students. Just being around a bunch of smart young ladies was such a positive environment to be in."

Coupled with the other lessons she learned from playing sports at UDM, Caloia came away from her time at the university better-equipped for the challenges life would throw at her, from her service with the U.S. Air Force in Afghanistan to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Discipline is a huge thing that college sports brings to people,” she said. “That has been helpful for me, especially going into medical school and the military and it helped me acclimate to that setting and not being afraid of hard work.”