Brown ‘So Honored’ To Speak At UGA Graduation
May 14, 2023 | Gymnastics, The Frierson Files
By John Frierson
Staff Writer
As she posed for pictures inside the Suzanne Yoculan Gymnastics Center on Friday morning, dressed in the black and green regalia she'd wear at Sanford Stadium hours later as the UGA spring undergraduate commencement speaker, Dr. Leah Brown looked resplendent and refined.
The uniform of the distinguished suits her very well.
Long before she was speaking in front of huge crowds as both a former star student-athlete and a highly accomplished orthopedic surgeon, Brown was a Georgia GymDog performing in front of 10,000-plus at Stegeman Coliseum. If you're composed enough to do twists, turns and flips on a balance beam as wide as a piece of toast, surely nothing can make you nervous, right?
Not so much. Brown is used to speaking to groups, but Friday's speech, slated to last about 15 minutes, would be to the biggest crowd she'd ever addressed.
"The nice thing is that we're all Bulldogs," she said that morning. "I'm a Bulldog, and I kind of feel like I'm speaking to family."
Upon receiving the invitation to speak at graduation from UGA President Jere W. Morehead, Brown was blown away.
"It's a tremendous honor that kind of put me in silence. I was so full of gratitude and I felt so honored. I love this university, and to have President Morehead extend that invitation was just like, wow. Little me?" she said.
Then the reality of what she was asked to do set in.
"It hit me like, oh, my gosh, what do I have to tell? But I guess through life experience we all have a story. You don't have to be famous and you don't have to have a million social media followers to have a story to tell."
Brown, who lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., joked that Arizona State's commencement featured the Surgeon General of the United States, Vice Admiral Vivek H. Murthy, while Georgia was having to settle for her. Settle? Hardly.
Let's see the Surgeon General do a floor routine or stick the landing after soaring through the air on a vault attempt. Truth be told, Brown isn't doing much tumbling these days, either.
"I always want to and then I think, Oh, I cannot injure myself. I actually need my body to work," she said. "Maybe one day, when I have an appropriate amount of time off, I can do that risk mitigation and get my fix.
"It's funny, the last time I did some skills was probably almost 10 years ago, and I was surprised at home much I could still do. But, I did fall, I did crash, and it just feels a little different these days."
If there's one life lesson that gymnastics teaches, it's that you're going to fall, you're going to struggle, and you have to keep getting back up and trying again. Nobody nails a vault or bars routine the first time out.
"It's a huge life lesson to learn early on," she said. "That's what sports does. Sports, musical instruments, anything that requires that kind of commitment and the capacity to fail, and fail big. And in gymnastics, you can fail big time. You're going to crash, and it hurts, and you're scared, and you've got to get up and do it again. ...
"You've got to muster up the courage to go for it and the courage to try it again."
A 14-time All-American during her stellar career (1994-97), Brown won the NCAA title in the vault in 1996 and the floor exercise in 1997. She was the first gymnast in NCAA history to score a perfect 10.0 in her first collegiate meet, and she finished with 19 10s during her GymDog career. She twice earned Academic All-SEC honors en route to earning a degree in Genetics.
In 2016, Brown received the highest honor a former Georgia student-athlete can achieve when she was inducted in the Circle of Honor. Last fall, Brown was one of three recipients of the Arch Award, presented by the UGA Athletic Association and Piedmont Bank. The award highlights the successes of former Bulldogs in the business world. In addition, Brown currently serves on the UGA Foundation Board of Trustees.
After graduating in 1998, Brown joined the U.S. Navy and attended medical school at Ohio State. After doing her internship at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, she served as a battalion surgeon at the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.
During Operation Iraqi Freedom, in 2006, she went overseas and served as a Medical Aid Station Director. Later, she was deployed to Afghanistan to serve as the Orthopedic Surgery Department head during Operation Enduring Freedom. Since 2013, Brown has served as an orthopedic surgeon with the U.S. Navy Reserves, along with running her own practice. She has received nine military honors and awards, including the Bronze Star.
Brown's medical practice, UrgentlyOrtho, is a walk-in orthopedic clinic. She started the practice because she saw a need for people with non-emergency sports or other injuries to get specialty care right away, without waiting days or weeks to get a doctor's appointment.
Gymnastics at the junior level is largely an individual pursuit, but competing in college is much different. At Georgia, Brown was a part of a team — one that trained together, competed together, did pretty much everything together. Being part of a surgical team is a similar experience, she said.
"Everybody has their role, and you can't get the job done without every member of the team," said Brown, who also serves as the team orthopedic surgeon for the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury. "There's not an emphasis on who's important, because everyone's important.
"That's the lesson you learn in team sports. It doesn't matter what job you have, you've just got to do your job."
As for her job of preparing the commencement address, Brown, who admits that the online world isn't one she knows well, did give the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT a try.
"I asked ChatGPT some questions and it gave me a great, beautiful answer with the worst references that didn't exist. That was my experience with ChatGPT," she said, laughing. "I decided I would just leave that to the technology folks.
"I think there's something to telling your own story. It comes from the heart. As we advance in our technology skills, the thing that we can't create is heart. That's what this university is so good at, being at the core and tugging at your heart."
Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.
