When Claire Thompson wakes up each morning, the first thing on her mind is flashcards.

She doesn’t leave for practice like most hockey players do in the morning; that will come later. She doesn’t go to the gym either, not until she finishes class for the day. But Thompson is not a typical hockey player. She’s one of Canada’s best, an Olympic gold medalist and world champion — and a full-time medical student at New York University.

Advertisement

Before she gets to hockey, Thompson’s day starts on the AnkiApp — a popular flashcard app among students — and hours spent testing herself on questions like: If the splenic artery is occluded, what organs are affected? Or, What inflammatory bowel disease presents with non-caseating granulomas on histology?

“There’s a lot to get done every day,” Thompson told The Athletic.

Just over a year removed from winning a gold medal in Beijing and setting an Olympic record for points by a defender in a single tournament (13), Thompson is in her first year at NYU Grossman, one of the best medical schools in the country. She’s also still a member of Team Canada with every intention of making the roster that will go for its third straight gold medal at the 2023 women’s world championships in Brampton, Ontario, next month.

Class is in session during the April tournament, so missing nearly a month will necessitate some work with the administration. Should she make the team — and she almost certainly will, as one of Canada’s top defenders — Thompson will need to navigate the rigors of a major international tournament while keeping up with her studies from a hotel room.

“Everyone has been so supportive of me being able to chase all my dreams,” Thompson said. “Everywhere I go there’s people looking out for me, supporting me, wanting me to succeed.”

A postgraduate education, particularly in medicine, after playing for the Canadian women’s national team is not unprecedented. Hayley Wickenheiser went to med school when she retired in 2017; she’s now a resident physician in a Toronto hospital emergency department, while also working as an assistant general manager for the Maple Leafs. Halli Kryzaniak was on the national team from 2014-17 before going to medical school at the University of Calgary.

Advertisement

But Thompson is walking a path that’s all her own.

“What’s she’s doing is out of this world. I think about me trying to find my way through college and how much of a disaster it was at times, and she’s in med school,” said Canadian teammate Erin Ambrose. “I don’t know how she’s doing it.”

When Cara Morey reminisces about recruiting Thompson, it isn’t conversations about playing time, or her role in the Princeton lineup that stand out.

“She told me she was going to be a cardiothoracic surgeon,” said Morey, the head coach of the Princeton women’s hockey team. “And this is at 16 years old.”

At the time, Thompson was in high school at Martingrove Collegiate Institute in Toronto, where she grew up the middle of three sisters. Her dad, Ian, is a nuclear engineer and her mom, Kristy, is a financial analyst. Thompson’s interest in medicine began in high school, the same time she was flourishing in hockey. She played at Martingrove and for the Toronto Junior Aeros in the Provincial Women’s Hockey League, where she won a league title and provincial championship. She committed to play at Princeton for Morey, and she’d even been invited to one of Team Canada’s under-18 selection camps.

But by the time Thompson made it to college, the choice — between a career in hockey or medicine — seemed to have been made for her. Thompson did not make any U18 rosters before her eligibility expired. She wasn’t invited to join the under-22 development team either. So Thompson decided the end of her college career would be the end of her hockey career.

“I was obviously disappointed, but I was still going to Princeton, which is an amazing school and hockey program, and I just decided that I would be the best player possible for that team,” she said.

But for Thompson, success in one lane — higher education — led to success in another.

Advertisement

“I went back to playing hockey just because I loved it,” she said. “It kind of rejuvenated my relationship with the game, which I think in the end helped me continue to grow as a player and continually improve instead of getting burnt out or discouraged.”

As a freshman, Thompson was good. She improved in Year 2. By her third season “she was outstanding,” Morey said. And though Thompson was no longer focused on making Team Canada, Morey knew it was still possible. As a coach with Canada’s under-22 development team, Morey encouraged Team Canada management to have a look at her smooth-skating, puck-moving No. 1 defender. Having Morey as an advocate certainly helped. But so did having a freshman like Sarah Fillier — one of the brightest young players in the game — at Princeton.

That season — 2018-19 — Troy Ryan, coach of the Canadian senior women’s national team, spent a lot of time watching Princeton. Even though he was scouting Fillier, Thompson stood out.

“A lot of people get noticed that way — you’re going to watch someone and someone else surfaces,” Ryan said. “She was dominant, and very mobile. She’s big, she’s athletic, she’s confident. We saw the chemistry between her and Fillier, too. It was a bit of a no-brainer once we saw her at that level.”

After the season, for the first time since she was 16, Thompson was invited to a Hockey Canada selection camp for the under-22 team. Off the ice, though, she was planning to spend her offseason in Washington, D.C., to complete research for her senior thesis on infectious disease transmission.

With a renewed opportunity to pursue hockey at the elite level, Thompson decided she could make both work.

She studied in D.C., trained off the ice, and went into the August camp having barely skated. Thompson made the team and was Canada’s best defender in a three-game series against the United States. Her senior thesis — which involved creating a computer program to simulate a 2019 measles outbreak among a population in New York — earned her a nomination to the scientific honors research society Sigma Xi.

Advertisement

Morey still laughs at the memory of Thompson’s first stint with the development team: While her teammates were napping or enjoying team meals, Thompson had her head in a textbook.

“To some extent, that’s the Ivy League athlete, but to some extent you just have to know Claire,” Morey said. “And if the work is hanging over her head while she’s trying to get ready for the game, that’s almost more detrimental to her play. She knows her schedule. She’s very calculated. She knows exactly what she’s doing.”

Thompson made her Team Canada debut in November 2019. As she played more with the national team, her once-dormant dream of going to the Olympics felt achievable. Her goal, she said, shifted to winning a world championship and an Olympic gold medal — and then going to medical school. Soon, she started crossing items off the to-do list.

After graduating with departmental high honors, she spent the year training with other Team Canada athletes in Toronto. In May 2021, around the same time she began her medical school application process, Thompson was chosen to the tryout rosters for the 2021 women’s world championships and 2022 Beijing Olympics.

By August that year, she looked like a steady veteran in her international debut at worlds in Calgary; Canada won the tournament for the first time in nearly a decade. Three months later, in November, Thompson found out she’d been accepted into the NYU Grossman Class of 2026.

Thompson didn’t just make the 2022 Olympic roster, she helped lead a historic run to the gold medal. Canada went undefeated and set an Olympic record with 57 goals in Beijing, and Thompson led all players with a plus-minus of plus-23.

“To see her in the span of a year go from making her first senior team to breaking records at the Olympics was really cool,” Canadian teammate Emily Clark said. When she returned from Beijing, Thompson knew she would be heading to New York in the fall for medical school. But as she spent some rare downtime reflecting on her journey and her goals for the next four years, Thompson decided she didn’t just want to graduate with a medical degree.

Advertisement

“Coming off such a fantastic Olympics, I knew that when I went back to medical school it was also a priority for me to stay as involved as I could in the hockey world,” she said.

Thompson received approval from NYU to miss the first month of school to play in the 2022 world championships in Denmark, but Troy Ryan and Team Canada manager Gina Kingsbury — as much as they wanted her on the ice — thought it would be better for Thompson to start school on the right foot. While Team Canada was winning another gold medal, Thompson was getting her bearings in New York City as a first-year medical student.

Around that same time, Michael Farkas was in his office, getting ready for the hockey season when an email chain caught his eye.

It was from other members of the athletic department, and they had a request for the head coach of the men’s hockey team. There was a new medical student at NYU, Claire Thompson, who wanted to skate with the team. Farkas was stunned.

“Is this the Claire Thompson that I’ve seen on TV?” he asked. “The one who just won a gold medal and was the best defender for Team Canada?”

Since there is no women’s hockey team at NYU, training with the men’s ACHA team was her best option.

“I immediately cracked open the ACHA rulebook to see if we could find a spot for her on the team (to play games),” he said. “I was just so excited. A player of that caliber to be involved in your program is just a really special opportunity for me as a coach and for all of our players. My No. 1 priority was making sure she had a place to continue to hone her skills.”

Thompson does not play for the NYU team; she’s already on Team Sonnet in the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association and back on Team Canada. But she does practice with the NYU men on Tuesday and Thursday nights after a full day of schoolwork.

Advertisement

“Between medical school, practicing with us, being part of the national team, being part of the pro circuit, and all the travel she has to do, it takes a real efficient, high-energy person to be able to handle all of that,” Farkas said.

As a first year at NYU Grossman, Thompson does not have typical courses or semesters like an undergraduate student would. Instead, things are taught in a continuous stream. One day, Thompson will learn about right-sided heart failure. The next day, it’ll be left-sided heart failure. Most segments of the curriculum are broken up by organ system. Thompson has already gone through the kidney, lungs and cardiopulmonary units, and now she’s working through the gastrointestinal system. Exams take place every two weeks, usually on Fridays. Thompson has not yet picked a specialty and is keeping her options open, though she has recently taken an interest in sports medicine.

An “ideal” day for Thompson begins with an early wakeup — typically before 7 a.m. — to study flashcards for the biweekly exams. By 9, she starts to go over the day’s lectures, which are posted online; sometimes she will go to the in-class lecture, but she prefers to do them remotely. Around 3 p.m., Thompson will do a strength workout from her program provided by Hockey Canada staff, followed by more studying and schoolwork. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she practices with the NYU men’s team from 8:30-10 p.m. And some days, she’ll have in-person clinical experiences and small-group seminars.

NYU med students are typically given the weekend after an exam to decompress. For Thompson, some of those weekends are for traveling with the PWHPA — a group that consists of the top women’s players who play in showcase events and plan to launch a new pro league next season — like last weekend in Washington, D.C.

Balancing the national team, though, can be a bit tricky because they will train and play during the week, which means Thompson misses more school. But this is what made missing the world championship in Denmark strategic. Now, when she misses classes, she has friends she can talk to if she needs clarity on a subject. And she’s able to take exams early, or hop into seminars or clinicals with different professors before she leaves for the week. Her professors, she said, have been very accommodating.

Clark roomed with Thompson at a Rivalry Series game in Seattle back in November. Thompson would wake up at 6 a.m. to study her flashcards while Clark slept, and again before they went to bed. “We were definitely on different schedules,” Clark said.

The balancing act is nothing new for Thompson. Her teammates and coaches will tell you that she’s mastered the art of “being where your feet are.” When it’s time to study, she’s incredibly intelligent and is a high-achiever. When it’s time to focus on hockey, she’s one of the best players on the ice.

Advertisement

“Anyone who meets Claire would tell you she’s such a unique and awesome person,” Clark said. “She’s a genius but she never makes you feel that way. She’s so down to earth, and such a blast to be around.”

How much hockey Thompson can take on each year — with the national team and the PWHPA — will depend on her school schedule and, as she gets further into the program, the amount of time she’ll need to spend in clinicals or placements. It will be a year-to-year adjustment, with the ultimate goal being another Olympic gold medal in 2026. “I want to do both as long as I can,” she said.

As far as this year is concerned, Team Canada will want Thompson around for the upcoming world championships in Brampton. Canada has won the last three major gold medals, but Team USA looked strong in Denmark.

Thompson will still be in school during the April 5-16 tournament, but could reasonably get the time off, as she was approved to do so last summer. Canada isn’t expected to gather until the end of the month for training camp, so Thompson has time to make her choice.

And when the tournament starts, there will still be a few waking hours for flashcards.

(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic. Photos: Courtesy Claire Thompson; Jesse Johnston / Associated Press)