'Doc Throck' Is Oregon Football's Renaissance Man In The Trenches

His day began with weight-lifting and football meetings, followed by practice. Now, Calvin Throckmorton is sitting in a basement laboratory of Klamath Hall on the University of Oregon campus, crammed into a small desk monitoring the collection of data at a computer terminal.

Throckmorton, a junior offensive lineman on the UO football team, has proven himself a man of many talents on the field. He has started all 34 games over the last three years, at four different positions — most recently center last week at Utah. When the Ducks host Arizona State on Saturday (7:30 p.m., Pac-12), he's expected to be back at left tackle protecting Justin Herbert's blind side, as Throckmorton has done since Penei Sewell's injury.

It turns out Throckmorton is a Renaissance man off the field as well. He's majoring in human physiology, on his way to applying for medical school next summer; on Thursday he was named a district all-academic team selection, making him eligible for academic all-American consideration.

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Having advanced through a Spanish immersion program while growing up in Bellevue, Wash., Throckmorton can be found on planes and busses during UO road trips reading books in that language, to brush up on his vocabulary. He's also a beginner on the guitar, in the classical style — "plucked, not strummed," as Throckmorton puts it.

And now, in that basement laboratory of the UO campus, Throckmorton is standing at a white dry erase board, red marker in hand, calculating angles as part of a group project in which he's participating.

Throckmorton and some classmates are considering backpackers bearing heavy loads on uphill climbs, and how that affects their posture — potentially leading to back injuries. He's at the erase board to calculate how much increasing weight in a backpack has changed the angle at which a classmate is bending at the waist.

"Just a little trig," Throckmorton says casually by way of explanation.

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No big deal. Just a little trigonometry, from a two-time honorable mention all-Pac-12 offensive lineman, projected in some circles as a first-round NFL draft pick, whose backup plan if football doesn't work out is going to medical school to pursue a career as an orthopedic surgeon.

"I don't know how he does football and these classes and is, like, a person," said Katelyn Beilby, a UO senior who is a classmate of Throckmorton's, and also a fellow peer advisor.

Oh, yeah, about that: Throckmorton also spends a couple hours per week as a peer advisor. He knocks out study time in open office hours, while making himself available for classmates to drop in for help with their own human physiology studies.

"In our level of classes, I don't know how you do both (academics and athletics)," Beilby continued, during a break from her own work in the lab course titled Human Physiology 333: Motor Control. "And to do them so well."

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As noted above, Throckmorton on Thursday was named to the Google Cloud Academic All-District first team, thanks to his 3.84 cumulative grade-point average. He's also the No. 4-rated offensive tackle in the 130-team NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision, according to analytics by Pro Football Focus. In his debut as Oregon's center last week, Throckmorton graded out above 90 percent in all the categories considered by UO coaches — performance, technique and effort.

Throckmorton debuted with the Ducks in 2016 as a redshirt freshman, starting all 12 games at right tackle. He started another 10 games there in 2017, but also three at right guard after senior Jake Pisarcik was injured.

Throckmorton began 2018 back at right tackle, shifted over to left tackle after six games due to Sewell's injury, then started last week at center while Jake Hanson served a one-half suspension; Throckmorton had spent all of this year's spring practices at center, too, while Hanson rehabbed an injury.

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"I've got so much respect for him," said Herbert, the UO teammate who can perhaps relate best to Throckmorton, since they've taken some of the same science classes and both are two-time academic all-district picks.

"He's a guy that doesn't complain at all. He's taking the toughest class load of anyone on the team. What he's able to do on and off the field, watch as much film as he does and be a leader, I've got so much respect for him."

Beilby, Throckmorton's fellow human physiology peer advisor, suggested that Throckmorton must have the best time-management skills in the world. It is indeed an impressive juggling act, which Throckmorton somehow manages in his head, as opposed to those people who have to maniacally manage an appointment book to stay on schedule.

But what Throckmorton is able to accomplish, in the classroom and on the football field, is as much about what he doesn't do with his time as what he does do. He doesn't watch much TV. When teammates are discussing recent adventures playing "Fortnite" and such, Throckmorton can't relate; he's not really into video games, either.

"We have O-line dinners every Thursday night, where we all get together," Throckmorton offered. "That's pretty much 'cutting loose' for me."

This isn't a guy who suffers from FOMO — that's "fear of missing out," for the slang-deficient — nor one susceptible to peer pressure. At those dinners with the offensive line, Throckmorton's teammates casually refer to him as "Doc Throck," a nod of respect to his academic proficiency and future career path.

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"He's way beyond our mental capacity," Throckmorton's fellow three-year starter Shane Lemieux joked. "I couldn't even imagine how much work he does behind the scenes. I try to take a little bit from him every day, because he's just a rare individual. I've never seen anyone like him."

As might be surmised based in his academic interest, Throckmorton is the son of an educator. His mom, Jane, helps out at a preschool; Throckmorton's dad, John, recently retired from a career in marketing with a telecommunications company.

"They both really ingrained in me a sense of hard work, and doing the right thing," said Throckmorton, whose Twitter bio urges followers to, "sacrifice the easier wrong for the more difficult right."

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One of the first books Throckmorton recalls reading, as a young child, was called "How Things Work." It had chapters on engineering, and mechanics — and, tellingly, anatomy. That was one of the earliest sparks on his road to a medical career.

"I've always been really fascinated with how we work — how the human body works," Throckmorton said. "It was something I was passionate about."

Following his lab class, each Tuesday and Thursday, Throckmorton attends a lecture for HPHY 333: Motor Control. On Tuesday of this week, the class involved test review, but the instructor began by showing video of test patients who were unable to walk due to spinal cord injuries, yet thanks to "targeted neurotechnology" regained some mobility.

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"If this technology becomes commonplace," the instructor noted after showing breath-taking video of the test patients walking upright, "you won't be seeing people who are 'wheelchair-bound.' Which is pretty cool."

As Throckmorton walked back to his car after class, he reflected on the video. "I think anybody who does this," he said, "wants to make the world a better place."

Throckmorton's day had begun with football meetings and practice, and he had another meeting later that evening. With a couple hours to kill after HPHY 333 concluded, he had time to go back and review video of the course — HPHY 362: Tissue Injury And Repair — that he misses each Tuesday and Thursday morning due to football practice.

That's been one of the sacrifices he's had to make, although sometimes football takes a back seat; twice last fall, Throckmorton missed a Friday pregame walk-through because of anatomy exams that required him to identify body parts on a cadaver.

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Next term, Throckmorton will take organic chemistry with Herbert. He's considering whether to became a lab assistant over the winter. He'll also be studying for the Medical College Admission Test, which he plans to take in summer 2019.

Assuming he's still at Oregon next fall, Throckmorton will take more pre-med requirements — if he's not already in an NFL training camp, an option some draft projections suggest he could have.

Whatever his future in football holds, Throckmorton's passion for medicine won't be diminished. If he's lucky enough to play in the NFL, there would just be a different group of teammates amazed and impressed by a player who eschews frivolity to indulge his many curiosities, the way his Oregon coaches and teammates are.

"They understand where my priorities are, and they understand what's important to me," Throckmorton said. "For guys to call you 'Doc Throck'? That's pretty cool."