Ex-Fresno State football player with familiar last name now operating as team doctor | Opinion
Not very often does someone get recruited to play FBS college football and then — 15 years later — get recruited to serve as the team’s orthopedic surgeon.
Dr. Zachary Hill’s medical career is only beginning. But at 34 years old, his life has already taken a giant lap.
On Saturday in West Lafayette, Indiana, when Fresno State opens the 2023 season against Purdue, the newest member of the medical staff will be a familiar face with an even more familiar last name.
Among family, friends and ex-teammates, the youngest son of former Bulldogs coach Pat Hill goes by “Zak.” When he’s on the job the proper title is “Dr. Hill” — something his ears are still getting used to.
“It’s weird to be called ‘doctor,’ ” Hill confided during our conversation in a third-floor conference room at Sierra Pacific Orthopedics’ Herndon Avenue campus. “In residency you never get called ‘doctor,’ except by the nurses who like you.”
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Hill’s journey, from college athlete whose own career was thwarted by injuries to sports medicine surgeon at the region’s top orthopedic practice, wasn’t planned in advance. Nor did it happen entirely by accident.
Rather, certain seeds were planted, and watered regularly, by Eric Hanson, the team doctor who performed multiple surgeries on Hill and countless other Bulldog football players since 1991.
“It was always Dr. Hanson, his little joke,” Hill said. “I’ve wanted to do medicine since I was in college and he knew that. He told me, ‘You’re going to come back and be the team physician for Fresno State.’ I went, ‘How do you even know I want to do orthopedic surgery?’ He said, ‘You will. Trust me.’ ”
When asked about this, Hanson only mildly disputes his new colleague’s version of events: “I don’t know if I planted ortho in his head.”
Hanson and Pat Hill became close friends during their 15 years together at team doctor and coach, a relationship that extended to Hill’s youngest son after the promising safety blew out his knee during practice before his junior season.
“Zak suffered a very severe knee injury, so you get to know someone on a whole different level after that,” Hanson said.
Long path leads back home
Even though Hill ended up right where Hanson predicted all along, it was far from certain that he would.
The first hurdle was four years of medical school at Loma Linda University, where the eager student promised himself to “keep my mind open” while being exposed to numerous fields before ultimately choosing orthopedic surgery as a specialty.
Then came a five-year internship and residency at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, followed by a sports medicine fellowship at Emory University in Atlanta, where Hill worked alongside team physicians for the Atlanta Falcons and Georgia Tech.
Even after all that, it still wasn’t a sure thing Dr. Zachary Hill would hang up his professional shingle in Fresno.
“The recruiting process started a long, long time ago,” Hanson said. “He was in high demand because he performed so well on exams and in clinical tests.”
Hill felt he owed it to himself and his wife Meghan, a former Bulldogs track and field runner, to explore every option available before deciding to move back to his hometown.
“Being close to my family, to be team physician at my alma mater and to serve the community and the Valley as a whole with my skills, it would take a lot to pull me away,” Hill said. “But I didn’t want to be tied to something and not see what else was out there.
“It took me about two months when I was in Atlanta to figure out what I have back here is, bar none, a tremendous opportunity. I talked to one of the other interns and they were like, ‘You would be dumb not to take that. What are you waiting for?’ ”
While Hill already got his first taste of sideline duties, he knows Saturday will be different.
“It’s going to be way more exciting,” Hill said with a smile. “When Georgia Tech scored I was excited, but I wasn’t jumping up and down shoving people like I will be. The cool thing is my dad is traveling. I get to travel with my dad.”
‘I couldn’t be more fortunate’
Pat Hill serves as color analyst in the Bulldogs’ radio booth alongside play-by-play voice Paul Loeffler. He and his wife, Cathy, have three grown sons who are now all back home raising families and making a difference.
Mike, the couple’s oldest, is a longtime special education teacher at Hoover High who also coaches special needs sports. Middle son Matt is in his first year as a history and English teacher at Reyburn Intermediate.
Pat and Cathy Hill have seven grandchildren, the seventh born less than two weeks ago, with No. 8 expected in January when Zak and Meghan’s first child is due.
“I think that’s something we always preached: Put yourself in a position where you can be a benefit to your community,” Pat Hill said. “We’re very proud of the boys, all of them. I couldn’t be more fortunate as a father. As I get up in years, having all my kids and grandkids around is going to be special.”
In that Hanson is retiring at year’s end, the arrival of Dr. Zachary Hill is well-timed. Hill will inherit Hanson’s office at SPOC and work alongside fellow sports medicine surgeon Vincent Gomez, who will assume Hanson’s title of head team physician for Bulldogs athletics. (Fresno State team doctors are volunteers. They get paid for the surgeries, but at reduced rates.)
Fresno’s newest orthopedic surgeon is anxious to get started. Before our interview, Hill spent 4½ hours “in the lab” performing two shoulder surgeries on a cadaver, including a tricky rotator cuff procedure “just to keep the skills honed.”
Saturday’s game marks Hill’s first official duty as a Fresno State team physician. His first shift as a Fresno doctor is Tuesday when he is on call at St. Agnes Medical Center, the hospital where he was born.
“It’s all come full circle,” Hill said, smiling again.
