From Student-Athlete to Surgeon, UMW Alumna Comes Home to Fredericksburg
Long before Sabrina Elliott ’17 picked up a scalpel, it was a lacrosse stick that led her to the University of Mary Washington. There, she found a place to compete as a student-athlete while building the academic foundation for a future in medicine.
More than a decade later, her pursuit of a career in surgery has brought her back to Fredericksburg – just down the road from the campus where her journey began – as a general surgery resident at Mary Washington Healthcare.
“Fredericksburg is very much home,” said Elliott, who grew up in Northern Virginia and discovered Mary Washington while being recruited to play college lacrosse. She remembers stepping onto the UMW campus and feeling an immediate sense of belonging. “It was just comfortable,” she said. “There’s this sense of community you get when you walk on campus.”
Elliott wanted a school where she could compete as an athlete without compromising academics. At UMW, she majored in biology and minored in chemistry while preparing for medical school and competing on the women’s lacrosse team, serving as captain her senior year. She also embraced the liberal arts and sciences, taking classes in Spanish, math, logic, public speaking, history and art. She still uses the Spanish she learned with patients today.
“I found that liberal arts schools have taught me how to think, not just what to think,” she said.
Read more about UMW alumna’s journey from student-athlete to surgeon.
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