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COLUMBIA, Mo.— Two of the most important people on Faurot Field every football Saturday trained all their adult lives for roles they now play for their hometown team.
But they come to work each game hoping nobody needs their help.
They always do.
Dr. Tiffany Bohon and Dr. Clayton Nuelle serve as associate head team physicians for Mizzou Athletics, both working with head team physician Dr. James Stannard. Bohon, a former Mizzou swimmer, practices family medicine in Columbia and serves as the primary care physician for all Mizzou student-athletes while working especially close with football, swimming and diving and wrestling. Nuelle, an orthopaedic surgeon who specializes in sports medicine and joint restoration, treats patients at Missouri Orthopaedic Institute as well as Mizzou athletes in football, soccer, swimming and diving and tennis.
They’re both Columbia natives, separated by just a couple years at Hickman High School. They grew up cheering for the Tigers — Bohon swam for Mizzou from 1999-2003 — and years later found their way into prominent roles on game days and every day in between.
What are the odds two Columbia kids reunite on college sport’s biggest stage treating athletes for a Southeastern Conference program? From time to time in this space we’ll introduce you to people around Mizzou Athletics who don’t command the biggest headlines but make a difference every day in their roles.
This week, meet the hometown team docs.
Bohon, a four-time high school state champion in the breaststroke, compared her current game-day approach to her days competing in the pool.
“We go out there every day with the same mentality that our goal is to take care of these athletes and, within reason, we want them to be able to play,” she said. “But we’re the ones that are thinking long-term and know more than others. Our trainers are very knowledgeable, too. Using our expertise in that moment, I feel that adrenaline. Trainers love what they do, too, because it’s kind of a rush. I’m not an EMT or anything like that, but you want to rise to the occasion when you’re under pressure. And I think that’s kind of just the athlete in me, too. It’s go time. I’m not playing, but we kind of are in our roles, right? Knowing that we’re there to protect people, but also knowing that they only have 12 games a year.”
The first time he treated athletes in the middle of a game was “pretty nerve-wracking,” Nuelle said. But quickly the training kicks in.
“Of course, we want the team to win and of course we want the team to do well,” Nuelle said. “We want to be a fan. We want to watch and we want everything to go well — but never at the expense of the health of the athlete.
“The question I get a lot is, ‘Do you get nervous?’ Chris Gervino once asked me if I was nervous taking care of Brady Cook’s shoulder. The best way I can summarize it is … it’s like when you get between the white lines, you’re so hyper-focused. When I get in the operating room, it doesn’t matter whose name is on the chart. I’m just focused on the operation and the procedure. Then when you do that, it’s the same as everything that you’ve done 100 or 1,000 times.”
After her decorated high school swimming career, Bohon chose Mizzou over SMU and TCU and planned to study physical therapy while swimming for the Tigers. During her junior year, though, a conversation with a physiology professor convinced Bohon to change course and pursue a medical degree.
“That just changed my trajectory a little bit,” she said. “I knew I wanted to be involved with athletes somehow.”
Once her swimming eligibility expired, Bohon volunteered as a student athletic trainer for the Mizzou football team as she completed her prerequisites for medical school at Mizzou. After her residency at MU in family medicine, she followed her mentor and former physician, Dr. James Kinderknecht, to New York to practice sports medicine. Once an opportunity emerged to return to Mizzou in 2014, Bohon came home.
In her role overseeing primary care for all Mizzou teams and team physicians, Bohon was MU Athletics’ primary point person during the pandemic — an enormous task through all the protocols, all the testing.
“If you go into any athlete’s medical record, her name is the one that comes up as the primary care physician,” Nuelle said. “And that’s for every single one of our athletes.”
In high school, Nuelle dreamed of becoming an NFL player or sports agent, but once he job shadowed a local orthopaedic surgeon, Dr. Peter Buchert, he started thinking about one day practicing medicine. He left Columbia for undergrad (Notre Dame) and medical school (Loyola University Chicago) and later returned to Columbia for an orthopaedic surgery residency. From there, he moved to Texas, where we worked for a Triple-A baseball franchise and his wife, Julia Nuelle, served as the Chief of Hand Surgery at the San Antonio Military Medical Center. Soon, Dr. Stannard and Dr. Pat Smith, Mizzou’s longtime team surgeon, recruited Nuelle to return to Columbia.
“Obviously I love Mizzou. I grew up rooting for Mizzou, both my parents are Mizzou alums. So the opportunity to come back in a great work environment and then take care of a football team in the SEC at Mizzou, it all kind of fell into place,” Nuelle said. “It evolved into what I would call my dream job now in orthopaedics. I love taking care of athletes and I love taking care of elite Division I athletes.
“I don’t think I would want to be anywhere else.”
More Football!
Watch this week’s Mini Movie from the Homecoming win over South Carolina:
Watch defensive coordinator Blake Baker and offensive coordinator Kirby Moore‘s bye-week press conferences:
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Listen to Tuesday’s episode of “Tiger Talk” where Mike Kelly was joined by three former Tiger players now working for the program: special teams analyst Brock Olivo, director of player development Atiyyah Ellison and assistant director of recruiting and player relations Evan Boehm:
On the Rise
In this case, he’s already risen. Keegan O’Toole added to one of the most decorated careers of any Mizzou athlete in any sport on Tuesday when he captured a gold medal at the U23 World Championships in Tirana, Albania. O’Toole, a two-time NCAA champion, became a two-time world champion when he beat Russia’s Imam Ganishov 6-1 in the 74-kilogram gold-medal match. O’Toole previously won a gold medal at the Junior World Championships in 2021 in the U20 age group.
“My three things that I said to myself before every match was patience, consistent pressure and hands at home,” O’Toole told USA Wrestling after the championship match. “If I can do those three things consistently, no one in the world can beat me. And this is just the beginning: I’m gonna go onto the NCAA season and then make the (2024) Olympic team.”
Don’t forget, Keegan’s got more college eligibility ahead of him, but it’s not too early to start thinking about his legacy as one of the greatest Mizzou athletes of the century. Of course, a couple other wrestlers share space in that discussion, too, the great Ben Askren and J’den Cox.
Mizzou Wrestling kicks off its season with Saturday’s Black & Gold match, set for a 3 p.m. start at Hearnes Center.
Tiger Trivia
Find answers at the end of today’s newsletter.
1. Saturday’s Homecoming victory extended Mizzou’s winning streak over South Carolina to five games. Where does that rank among MU’s longest current win streaks over Power Five programs?
2. Which former Mizzou basketball player has scored the most regular-season career points in the NBA?
Matter’s Weekly Power Rankings
Each week we’ll highlight the Best of Mizzou with a different theme. This week: Mizzou’s best games coming off a bye week. The bye week is still a relative new addition to the college football schedule. Until the 1990s, the season started later and ended earlier and rarely left room for an off week. Mizzou didn’t consistently have a bye week until the late 1990s, but since then, we’ve seen some memorable victories coming off the bye. Here are the top five …
1. Mizzou 41, Nebraska 24, Oct. 11, 2003: The Tigers had suffered a deflating home loss to that team from the west to spoil a strong start to the season but two weeks later snapped a 24-game losing streak to the Cornhuskers behind Brad Smith‘s brilliance, James Kinney‘s strip sack and Sonny Riccio‘s fake field goal touchdown pass. In the immortal words of the late John Kadlec, “Sesay, Sesay! Boom, boom! Sesay!”
2. Mizzou 41, Nebraska 6, Oct. 6, 2007: A 4-0 start surged to 5-0 when the Tigers throttled the No. 25 Huskers behind Chase Daniel’s 473 yards of offense.
3. Mizzou 20, Kentucky 10, Oct. 24, 2020: Coach Eli Drinkwitz secured his second victory at Mizzou as the Tigers expunged a five-game losing streak to UK with a smashmouth, defensive slugfest. The matchup came after an unscheduled bye week when Vanderbilt had to postpone visiting Mizzou for COVID-related reasons.
4. Mizzou 52, Nebraska 17, Oct. 4, 2008: Sensing a theme here with the Huskers? After a 4-0 start, the Tigers marched into Lincoln and blasted the Huskers for their first victory there in 30 years. “That wasn’t just about the 2008 football team,” Tigers coach Gary Pinkel said. “It’s about 30 years of fans from around the world and a lot of former Missouri players. It’s pretty good to get a win at one of the toughest places to play in the country.” The 35-point defeat was the Huskers’ most lopsided home loss in 53 years.
5. Mizzou 34, Texas A&M 27, Nov. 15, 2014: The reigning SEC East champions used a bye week to refuel for the stretch run, including this crucial road win in College Station to extend what became a six-game winning streak toward another East title.
Mizzou Musings
Mizzou’s average home football attendance has increased 8.6% from 2022, the largest jump in the SEC. Since the 2018 season, MU home attendance is up 14.7%, also the largest increase over five years in the SEC and eighth-highest across the Power Five conferences. … Huge week for SEC athlete-of-the-week accolades for Mizzou: Cody Schrader (offensive football player), Javon Foster (offensive lineman), Jordan Iliff (offensive volleyball player), Kayla Wilson (women’s diver) and Collier Dyer (men’s diver). … Congrats to former cross country and track and field distance runner Samantha Farmer, who won the Kansas City Marathon on Saturday. … Through eight games, Brady Cook‘s passer rating (166.3) is better than any rating in team history. Drew Lock holds the single-season record (165.7), set in 2017. With 282.4 passing yards per game, Cook is on pace for 3,696 yards in a 13-game season, which would rank fourth all-time in MU history. The only QBs to throw for more yards in a season: Daniel in 2008 (4,335), Daniel in 2007 (4,306) and Lock in 2017 (3,964).
Looking Ahead
Friday, Oct. 27
Cross Country at SEC Championships, 9:08 a.m., 9:50 a.m., SEC Network+ (Columbia, South Carolina)
Saturday, Oct. 28
Wrestling Black & Gold Match, 3 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 29
Volleyball at Ole Miss, 1:30 p.m., SEC Network+ (Oxford, Mississippi)
Tuesday, Oct. 31
Baseball vs. Game 2 Fall Word Series, TBA
Wednesday, Nov. 1
Tennis at ITA National Fall Championship (San Diego, California)
Thursday, Nov. 2
Tennis at ITA National Fall Championship (San Diego, California)
Friday, Nov. 3
Tennis at ITA National Fall Championship (San Diego, California)
Tennis at Bulldog Classic (Des Moines, Iowa)
Men’s/Women’s Swimming & Diving at Lindenwood, noon (St. Charles, Missouri)
Volleyball vs Mississippi State, 6:30 p.m., SEC Network+
Links to Click
Group tickets and single-game tickets for the Florida football game (Nov. 18) are still available by calling 1-800-CAT-PAWS or buying online. Fans interested in learning more about available seats can fill out an interest form.
For all the latest information on Mizzou Athletics, please visit MUTigers.com. For up-to-the-minute updates, follow the Tigers on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Tiger Trivia
1. Tied for second. Mizzou has a six-game winning streak over Ole Miss, dating back to 1978, and a six-game winning streak over Illinois (2002-2010). Mizzou also owns a five-game winning streak over Colorado (2006-2010) and Iowa State (2007-2011). Mizzou is 5-0-1 in its last six games against Minnesota with four consecutive wins since the 0-0 tie in 1962.
2. Utah’s Jordan Clarkson, who began his 10th NBA season on Wednesday with 24 points against Sacramento, giving him 10,511 points since entering the league in 2014.
