Career Paths: Thornton Takes Road Less Traveled
CSU All-American goes to Olympics, then medical school
Savvy Rafkin
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The path to a hall-of-fame title is not an easy one, and for small-town girl Loree (Smith) Thornton, challenges were no stranger.
When starting eighth grade, Thornton moved from intercity Denver to Julesburg, a small town in Northeastern Colorado. With that venue change, she had no idea that she would become part of the CSU Athletics Hall of Fame, represent the United States in the Olympics or become a surgeon.
“There was this change from everything,” Thornton said. “I went to school where everyone knew everyone’s name, the class size was 20-25 people in the entire grade. You could run from one end of town to the other. We had a cornfield behind our house. It was definitely a change, but with it came a lot of benefits to a lot of growing up with a lot of the same people to doing a lot of sports. The town itself took an interest in helping the young people in it succeed.”
Thornton’s athletic journey started with her participation in many sports, but she found her groove in track and felt most comfortable with the hammer. CSU track and field coach Brian Bedard saw her potential from a grainy VHS tape, and her collegiate chapter began.
“I really didn’t know what kind of person she was,” Bedard said. “She had pretty good grades coming out of high school, and she was a good volleyball and basketball player and did pretty much everything at Julesburg High School. I decided on a hunch to give her a very small scholarship and that’s how the journey began.”
Thornton fell in love with the CSU campus, like many athletes who spent their career as a Ram. She felt at home with many of her track teammates, most coming from other small towns like Yuma, Haxtun and Alamosa.
However, when Thornton started college at 17, there were many unforeseen challenges. Not only was she a first-generation college student, but she experienced a new freedom where she was able to express herself and make her own decisions.
“I think Bedard painfully grew through most of those (experiences) when I showed up on the first day of practice with several new piercings I did not have when I interviewed,” Thornton said. “I was young, but I had a lot of role models to look up to.”
As an athlete, Thornton was a very coachable person and was eager to learn. Her work ethic set her apart from her other teammates. Outside of track, she struggled with personal issues but found it in herself to rise above her circumstances and became an incredibly successful athlete and person.
“Track was the easy part,” Thornton said. “When I put the hammer in my hand it felt like it should always be there, and it was so rewarding and it made so much sense to me. Like if you work hard and reach these goals it would happen. Life outside of track was the difficult part. I think just the biggest struggle was trying to move forward and better yourself not only on the track, but off of it. I credit the skills and people I’ve met through athletics into the success story of my life.”
Track was the easy part. When I put the hammer in my hand it felt like it should always be there, and it was so rewarding and it made so much sense to me.Loree (Smith) Thornton, CSU Athletic Hall of Fame Member
Thornton started her collegiate career hot by winning a Mountain West championship during her freshman season. In 2003, Thornton placed in the indoor shot put and weight throw. The following year, she won a gold medal in the North American Central American Championships in the hammer throw. With all of that success under her belt, Thornton earned All-American honors at the NCAA outdoor competition, placing second in 2004. Her final year, she won the NCAA Championship in the hammer and also set a school and MWC record with a 70.03m throw.
After graduating in 2005, Thornton continued her track career and ultimately competed in the Olympics. She placed ninth in the 2004 Olympic Trials and fourth in the 2008 Olympic Trials. She participated in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and placed 39th.
“During that time, she was working really hard,” long-time track and field friend Melissa Sarms said. “She was working at a bank and also trying to train, so it was a lot of pressure that wouldn’t be on a typical ‘pro athlete.’ It definitely wasn’t glamorous. Her training to go to the Olympics was no glamor, it was all grit.”
Thornton was inducted into the CSU Athletics Hall of Fame in 2015, following a career where she earned six All-American honors. She still holds the school and conference record for the indoor weight throw, ranks second in school and MW history for the indoor shot, holds the outdoor record in the hammer and remains in the top five in both the shot put and discus.
After finishing her athletic run in 2012, Thornton decided to pursue a career in medicine. Despite being a non-traditional med student and returning to school after 10 years, Thornton also had a baby during her third year and debated whether or not she should return to compete her fourth year of medical school right away or if she should take time off to care for her son.
“That’s a decade worth of living that she has done without being in the classroom,” Sarms said. “Having to get your mind back into this mode of learning and studying… crazy. I know she’s talked about med school was really about just study habits. How hard can you study, how much can you learn in the quickest amount of time. The workload and information that you have to process is what was crazy about it. Being out of school for ten years can be a challenge.”
Ultimately, Thornton made the decision to complete her fourth year right away and continued on to reach her goals.
Thornton was never going to be satisfied with a typical job that didn’t provide challenges. Though her friends and coaches didn’t expect to see her become a surgeon, they agreed that she would excel in the medical field because she strives for perfection in everything she does.
Thornton claims that her passion for medicine started when she was shadowing a mentor and experienced an open abdomen surgery. From there, the rest was history, and she knew medicine was her calling, just as track and field was once. To her, the road to becoming a surgeon was no different than the road to the Olympics. It was another goal in need of conquering. She completed medical school at the University of Colorado in Aurora before advancing to residency at the University of South Alabama.
“The thing about Loree is she was always going to do something big,” Sarms said. “I can’t stress enough how hard she has worked and how many daily battles she has overcome. It’s not like she ever had a yellow brick road to success. Every stage of the game she’s had to prove herself 10 times over. Be twice as good, work twice as hard. She’s absolutely has outworked everybody, and the struggle has been real. I think with that determination and grit that she’s instilled in herself over time, she wasn’t going to be happy with just doing something ‘run of the road.’ I think that Loree really needed to do something crazy and big. And that was going to be part of her gift to herself. There’s nothing ordinary about her or the situations she puts herself in. A surgeon makes sense for her because it’s always going to give her a challenge to strive perfection and to do something in a meaningful way that helps others.”
After finishing her residency, Thornton plans to do a fellowship to specialize in trauma or colorectal surgery.
Sometimes, the beginning doesn’t offer a tease of what will happen in the end. Bedard will tell you as much, knowing what he saw on VHS didn’t tell the whole story. Yet, in time, he came to understand Thornton was going to be full of surprises.
Most all of them good.
“She taught me to not put people in a box or set the bar too low, because any ideas of what I thought she could do she just blew it out of the water,” Bedard said. “She made me very careful about putting limitations on people.
“She had every reason to fail, and for some reason, she rose about that. There was something internal. She had this heart of a champion that she was going to overcome her circumstances and really be somebody very special in our program. I didn’t see that coming.”
Thornton is proof one is never too old to be the teacher or the student. Sometimes in life, you become both.
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