After a knee injury left Associate Professor of Clinical Physical Therapy Jonathan Sum unable to pursue his collegiate baseball dreams, the longtime baseball player sought a different path to foster the next generation of movement experts to keep baseball players (and other athletes) in peak competitive shape.

BY ANDREW FAUGHT

JONATHAN SUM ’01, DPT ’05 WAS A STANDOUT catching prospect at Pasadena’s La Salle High School when a freak injury set him on an unexpected path.

After his baseball team won the 1996 California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section Division V Championship, Sum’s fellow players wrestled on a gym mat in a show of celebratory exuberance. During the festivities, a teammate accidentally rolled over Sum’s left knee.

A physician diagnosed a sprain, while a physical therapist suggested Sum treat the injury with ice.

Sum suspects he suffered something far worse: undiagnosed full or partial tears to his anterior cruciate ligament (the ACL controls rotational stability) and his medial collateral ligament (the MCL is responsible for side-to-side stability).

“I needed good care to give myself a chance to reach my dreams, but it was sub-par,” Sum says. “I remember leaving the physical therapy appointment knowing that I wasn’t given the opportunity to experience a high level of sports rehabilitation.”

With his chances of being recruited to play college baseball vanishing, Sum enrolled at USC as a business undergraduate, but he switched to kinesiology and shortly thereafter served as a physical therapy aide at USC Physical Therapy, the Division’s faculty practice. The experience was revelatory, and it drove him to meet new personal goals: He’d forge a career in physical therapy at his alma mater.

“If I could be in a position to prevent someone else from going through what I went through, I was going to do that,” Sum says. “USC has the highest-level researchers with access to the highest-level technology and laboratory facilities. The clinical faculty that is second to none.”

Forging Major League Partnerships

Sum joined the USC faculty in 2006. His research examines upper extremity injuries and recovery in sports, physical factors related to shoulder disorders and sports recovery wear as well as previous research involving testosterone-supplemented ACL-deficient knees, body weight-assisted training following knee replacement, lumbar spine disc loading, lumbopelvic manipulation and Achilles tendinopathy.

He’s also developed partnerships that give students critical hands-on experience.

Sum is director of the USC Upper Extremity Athlete Physical Therapy Fellowship, the nation’s second university-based upper extremity physical therapy fellowship to be affiliated with a professional baseball organization.

As part of the program, fellows gain spring training clinical experience with the San Diego Padres (the program previously partnered with the Los Angeles Angels). Sum also created a partnership with the USC Trojans baseball team, for which fellows aid in rehabilitation.

“It’s a unique opportunity to work with the highest caliber athletes in the world,” he says. “Fellows can put this on their resumé and say they were employed by a Major League Baseball team. That goes a long way for getting future jobs.”

Attracting, Creating and Fostering Leaders

Students stand to benefit from his latest research: myotonometry, the study of dynamic tissue stiffness. The field could have implications for injury prevention and recovery.

Teaching is Sum’s biggest passion and source of pride: “I hope to inspire and equip the next generation of physical therapists. The way that healthcare is now, even compared to five years ago, is dramatically different. My hope is that we are able to prepare students to be able to function in that role, but more importantly, to make them change makers, needle movers, leaders and advocates.”

He judges his own effectiveness by USC graduates who serve in leadership roles, teach as faculty, own or direct clinics, direct laboratories or are in positions of influence and organizational decision-making in local, state and national groups.

“That’s what sticks out,” Sum says. “Here at USC, we attract, create and foster leaders.”