Medical career on hold, German defender Selin Oruz sets sights on Olympics 2024 | Hockey

Hailing from a family of doctors, a career in medicine is natural for German women's hockey team defender Selin Oruz and she did take up the profession, though she has taken a break from it in pursuit of representing her nation for the second time in Olympics.

Oruz, who was a part of Germany's bronze medial-winning side in the 2016 Rio Olympics, is pursuing her medical career in pediatrics but for the time being has taken a break to fulfil her sporting dreams.

Oruz's mother too is a pediatrician while her father is an ENT (ear, nose and throat) specialist. Her brother Timur Oruz is also a member of the German men's hockey team.

"Now I am practising medicine. It's much easier because I am not working on a clinic, so I can work on the weekend. Until the Olympics, I am going to focus on hockey but in the end I want to come out of hockey and work full-time as a doctor," Oruz told PTI after Germany's 3-0 win over Chile in the FIH Olympic Qualifiers here on Saturday.

"In Germany you have 7 years of study and one year of practice at the hospital. Then you have to specialise for 5 years. I'm right now specialising in pediatrics, specialising in ear, nose and throat of children. It's a good thing to start with because kids always have some problems on these fronts.

"I am in the first year of specialisation and need four more years. I just wrote my doctor thesis. But I need some time to complete my medicine because of hockey at the moment. I don't care because going to the Olympics should be worth it and I can concentrate on medicine for the rest of my life," she added.

Oruz played a part in Germany's win over Chile by scoring the opening goal.

Oruz, who idolises her mother, said the best part of playing hockey is that the sport relaxes her from the stress of her profession.

"It's all about discipline because it is difficult to combine sports and medicine but in the end you can combine both because they are similar, you have to be 100 per cent in both, you have to give your best in everything.

"I always love to play hockey as it calms me down a bit from the stress of medicine study," the 26-year-old said.

The affinity towards kids is what motivated her take up pediatrics.

"I love kids. My mother was a pediatrician, she was my idol and she loves kids so much and I too love kids because the most important thing is to work with children and improve the environment for children for our society. This is what I live for like trying to help children because they need our help," Oruz said.

"I love to interact with people and I think every doctor is best in interaction. I also love to talk to parents, if you work with children you need to interact with parents also, try to understand children." From childhood, she was multi-talented as besides hockey and medicine, she was also into music.

"This was ages ago but I did. I also played the piano but I don't play anything now. I played the instruments when I was a kid because my parents wanted me to try everything. I had the best childhood and my parents are my idols. They tried to give us the chance to try out everything," she said.

"I played violin really well for a long time but when sports and hockey became professional I decided to concentrate on sports." Oruz said sports is just part of life for any player in Germany and the current women's national team boasts of many professionals.

"In Germany we do a lot of stuff besides hockey and this is a good part. There is a psychologist, a law student, we have so many professionals in the team. It's really nice to have so many smart girls in the team."