Matt Lively had it all figured out: graduate from medical school, set up shop in a small town and spend his Friday nights taping kids’ ankles from the high school football sidelines.

And why not? It’s a good career...stable, rewarding, fun.

Yet there he was, just a few months back, standing on a very different sideline: The 2008 Fiesta Bowl, one of the premier showcases of talent and prestige in all of college football. Better still, his team—the West Virginia University Mountaineers—had just won its second Bowl Championship Series game in three years, firmly establishing it as one of the top programs in the country.

Lively can’t say it was a dream come true on that steamy January night in Scottsdale, Arizona, watching the Mountaineers rout the No. 3-ranked and heavily favored Oklahoma Sooners, 48-28. That’s because he never envisioned being there in the first place.

“I actually went to medical school so that I could stay involved in sports medicine,” says Lively, who has served as the WVU team physician since 1995. “I was an athletic trainer before I became a doctor. I wanted to do sports medicine all along. But I assumed that would mean being in private practice somewhere covering the local high school. I mean, that’s what I always figured. That I would be back in (rural) Oak Hill (West Virginia) or in Lewisburg (West Virginia) and be in one of those places taking care of the local high schools or whatever. That’s what I had foreseen.”

But that was before Lively graduated from the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine in Lewisburg, West Virginia. His experiences there, at one of the best medical schools in the country—U.S.News & World Report has listed WVSOM as one of its top medical schools 10 consecutive years—gave him the tools to succeed far beyond what he’d dreamed. Instead of Friday night lights, Lively spends his time in the national spotlight as a key member of one of 2009’s top contenders for the BCS National Championship.

WVSOM trains its students in Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (OMT), manual-based therapies that doctors of osteopathic medicine use to align the body and allow its own natural processes to speed healing. So, for doctors like Matt Lively who are interested in sports medicine, WVSOM is a natural fit. Not only is its legacy of excellence well documented, its emphasis on OMT provides an avenue for athletic training at the highest levels of sports today.

Of course, students who attend WVSOM can specialize in any field they wish. WVSOM graduates have gone on to practice brain surgery, deliver babies and work as primary care physicians in rural areas.

But for Lively, his initial path was clear. “I had been involved with sports medicine before I went to medical school,” he says. Indeed, it was that prior training that led him to select WVSOM. Then, when he entered his residency at WVU, a unique opportunity fell into his lap.

“I remember two-a-day football practices were going on, and there was a transition going on in the (WVU team) medical staff,” Lively recalls. “They knew I was there, and knew I specialized in sports medicine. They called me up and said they needed a team physician and asked, ‘Would you be willing to do it?’

“So I went to the training room during two-a-days, and they hired me right there,” he says. “That was it. It happened that fast and that luckily. It fell into my lap.”

Well, not exactly. Luck favors the prepared, or so the saying goes.

Matt Lively? After four years at the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine, he was more than prepared.