Meet the Chiefs sixth-round draft pick from Canada
Drafted in the sixth-round of the 2014 draft, Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, or as most call him, Larry, is 6-5, 315-pounds out of McGill University, located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Recently, I caught up with the Larry to discuss his move to the states, medical school and becoming a member of the Chiefs.
R: You were in your third-year of medical school before you were drafted, do you plan on finishing med school?
L: Yes, the plan right now is to do two or three months every offseason. So, I will go back to Montreal to do two or three months of school a year, in order to complete the year that I have left. It will end up being two or three months a year, for the next three years. I don’t want to have to restart, so it’s really important that I finish this last year I have of medical school. I probably want to be a sports doctor but we’ll see. The Friday, before the draft, I had just finished my pediatric rotation and here’s a good story, I was almost done with my shift, it was about 5:00 and I was rushing to get home to watch the draft. Well, we had an emergency c-section so I ended up staying there until about 8:00, so I missed the entire first day of the draft. It was pretty intense. I took off five months to train for the Combine, then I went back for two months for the pediatric rotation.
R: How did you manage football and medical school during your time at McGill?
L: Well, during the season it was pretty rough, but I tried to have some rotations that were a bit more relaxed during the football season. For example, last year I spent the first part of last season doing a sports medicine rotation with the football team doctor. During the offseason, when you do surgery rotations, it’s hard to find time to train at the same time, but you just have to keep pushing and go work if it’s 10:00 at night or 5:00 in the morning.
R: Do you have dreams of becoming a doctor? Or are you more passionate about football?
L: Right now it’s football. It’s football 100 percent. I love the idea, however, of having a good backup plan for after football. I want to do my two months a year and stay in the program, but my focus will be solely dedicated to football the rest of the time. This is a professional sport, it’s a full-time job and I want to give it my all.
Complete interview:
Q & A with Laurent Duvernay-Tardif
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