Department of Intercollegiate Athletics Award Recipients
Lifetime Achievement Award
DR. MICHAEL P. WOODS, ARTS '74
Oconomowoc, Wis.
Few individuals participate in an Olympic Games, let alone three. Dr. Michael Woods accomplished it after switching from track to speed skating, representing Marquette on the Junior World team and in two World Sprint Championships. He won a gold medal and two silver medals in eight all-around World Championships and was a national outdoor long track champion and U.S. Skater of the Year. In 1998, he was elected to the National Speed Skating Museum and Hall of Fame.
Michael then coached speed skating and bicycling while practicing anesthesiology in the Milwaukee area and still found time to raise funds for Milwaukee’s Pettit National Ice Center. He is currently chief of anesthesia services at Oconomowoc (Wis.) Memorial Hospital.
“I help people get through one of the most difficult days of their lives — the day of surgery — every day,” he says. He is very serious about providing safe, compassionate, reasonably priced care and “can’t think of anything I would rather do for a living.”
Michael and his wife, Susan, have instilled in their children a sense of service. Their daughter volunteers at a local nursing home, and their son created and runs a youth orchestra for inner-city children. Susan is a volunteer nurse at a free medical clinic, and Michael teaches Marquette nursing and physician assistant program students.
Michael’s father, sister, two brothers and son graduated from Marquette.
How has he attained a lifetime of achievement?
“Work hard consistently, work smarter than your opponents, be in the right place at the right time and don’t do the same stuff everybody else does,” he says.
Fun facts: Michael’s favorite quotes are (from Bull Durham): “Life is like baseball. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes it rains.”; and (from The Natural): “I believe we have two lives — one we learn with and one we live with after that.” His pick to have dinner with, past or present? Tennis pro John McEnroe.
