“If You Can Dream It, You Can Do It”: Olympic Curler Tabitha Peterson on Balancing Elite Athletics and Pharmacy

In this interview with Pharmacy Times, Tabitha Peterson, PharmD, Team USA Olympic curler, discusses how the skills she has developed through elite athletics translate into her career in pharmacy. Peterson highlights the importance of teamwork, communication, and strategic thinking in curling, noting that success depends on the team’s collective performance rather than individual achievements. She also reflects on the discipline and time management required to balance competitive curling, her pharmacy career, and family life. Peterson explains how her experience as an athlete and a pharmacist provides a unique perspective on medication safety, particularly through her involvement in antidoping education and understanding the risks associated with supplements. She emphasizes the role pharmacists can play in helping educate athletes about safe medication use and prohibited substances.

Pharmacy Times: You’ve built a career as both a PharmD and an Olympic curler. How have the skills and mindset required in pharmacy—such as precision, critical thinking, and accountability—helped shape your approach to high-performance athletics?

Tabitha Peterson, PharmD: I do think there are a lot of aspects and skills that overlap, for sure, especially in my sport of curling, where there is a whole mind side of the game vs just athletic performance, like a race, for example. So…there’s lots of overlap in that sense.

You know, studying for pharmacy school or learning something new in the pharmacy world—that’s an approach I take for curling as well. We do a lot of video analysis and strategy sessions, trying to fine-tune that aspect of our game because it is such a huge part of our game. The strategy can kind of win or lose games for you.

It’s kind of an endless amount of learning in that way, too, because obviously, the game is always changing. And that’s true for pharmacy, too. You have to stay up to date on the new things that are working in the sport and be willing to try new things out there on the ice and see what works for your team.

So yes, I do think there are lots of overlaps with the mind side of curling and pharmacy.

Pharmacy Times: Curling is an incredibly strategic sport that relies heavily on teamwork and communication. In what ways do those same collaborative skills translate to working within interdisciplinary health care teams in pharmacy practice?

Peterson: Curling is a team sport, so we do a lot of work on and off the ice to better our communication and to be the best teammates we can be out there. You could perform well as an individual—you could shoot a 100% game—but if one of your other teammates is struggling, you might not win the game. So, it’s not all about individual success; it’s your success as a team.

We’re always trying to figure out what we can do to help a teammate, for example, during a game or even just in practice—things like that. In pharmacy, too, there’s a lot of collaboration that goes on between doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and the whole medical team, really.

So, I think building those relationships is important because you’re acting kind of like a team in that environment as well. I do think that the skills I’ve learned from being a teammate on the curling team translate into working well as part of a medical team and helping provide the best care for patients.

Pharmacy Times: Balancing elite athletic competition with a demanding professional career is no small feat. How do you manage the physical and mental demands of training and competition while maintaining your responsibilities as a pharmacist?

Peterson: There’s obviously a lot of time that goes into both curling and pharmacy. I do work on a part-time basis right now while I pursue the curling aspect of my life, but my life up to this point has really been both. Whether it’s school—going to undergrad, going to pharmacy school—or being a pharmacist, I’ve curled the whole time, so it’s kind of all I know.

I think I’ve really built up a lot of time management skills. My motto is work before play. If there’s work to be done—whether it’s going to the gym, practicing curling, studying for pharmacy school, or going to work—I feel like I have to get all those things done before I can relax.

So, I do think time management is huge when it comes to juggling both, because it is a lot. And then there’s balancing family life and being a new mom. There are so many aspects that I’m juggling right now, but it’s a lot of fun, and I kind of like the challenge.

Pharmacy Times: Pharmacists play an important role in medication safety, performance health, and recovery. From your perspective as both a pharmacist and an athlete, how can pharmacy professionals better support athletes in optimizing performance while maintaining safe and ethical medication use?

Peterson: From an athlete perspective, I’m in the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) pool. If you’re an elite athlete, you’re in this pool, and you have to submit your whereabouts because you’re basically subject to drug testing at any time.

There’s a lot of education that goes along with that from USADA in terms of basically what you put in your body, you are responsible for. They do try to let you know what drugs, for example, are prohibited in and out of competition. There’s also a bit of a gray area with supplements because they aren’t regulated by the FDA, so you have to be a little more cautious about what you’re taking and what you’re putting in your body, because you could be liable if there is contamination.

So, there is a lot of education out there regarding this for athletes across the world. I think a pharmacist could definitely help in that sense, especially with the education piece. For me, as a health care professional and as a pharmacist, it’s kind of like I already know this stuff and don’t need to think twice about it, but I could see how it would be very overwhelming for someone who has no medical background—trying to figure out what can I take and what can’t I take.

It matters in competition and out of competition, and it is a lot. Obviously, a pharmacist is the resource that knows the most about drugs, so that could be a really valuable way to help educate athletes.

Pharmacy Times: High-level sports often require resilience in the face of setbacks or intense pressure. Have there been moments in curling that shaped how you handle challenging situations in your pharmacy career—or vice versa?

Peterson: Like you said, athletes and elite athletes go through a lot of highs and lows, and the Olympics is no exception to that. There’s a lot of anticipation, adrenaline, and excitement, and then you get home—whether you win a medal or you don’t—and there’s this period where you’re kind of like, OK, now what? You build up for 4 years to participate or peak in performance at this event, and then all of a sudden, it’s over.

So, there’s a lot that goes on mentally with athletes post Olympics. But you’re right—even in the day-to-day, winning other events, world championships, or nationals, whether you win or lose, you build resilience. You learn that it’s not the end-all be-all and that you’re able to move forward. Everything becomes a learning experience, which is how I try to look at it.

You know, the saying “you don’t lose, you learn” is something that comes up a lot. And that mindset translates into any career path, whether it’s pharmacy or something else. You don’t always get the job you applied for, or the raise you want, or the promotion. But if you keep putting in the work, doing what you can do, and controlling what you can control, those results will hopefully come.

Pharmacy Times: For pharmacists or pharmacy students who are also passionate about athletics, what advice would you give about pursuing both paths while maintaining excellence in each?

Peterson: I mean, it’s definitely doable to pursue both a career and an athletic career. It just takes a lot of time management and, I’ll say, help—especially as I get older in life and with having kids. I rely a lot on help from my husband and my parents, the grandparents, to help watch the baby.

If it’s something that you truly want, there are ways to make it happen. It just takes discipline. If you can dream it, you can do it.