Whitelaw Helps Hogs Stay At the Top of Their Game

As chiropractor to the Razorbacks for nearly 16 years, Dr. Steve Whitelaw helps keep the University of Arkansas’ athletes running, jumping, tackling and tumbling.

The first team chiropractor in the Southeastern Conference, Whitelaw worked mainly with the UA men’s athletic programs when he opened a Fayetteville clinic in 1997.

Then Jeff Long replaced retiring Frank Broyles as athletic director and merged the men’s and women’s programs, and Whitelaw and his associate, Dr. Eric Walker, found themselves treating athletes from the university’s 19 sports programs.

Whitelaw was working by himself at Ozark Spinal Associates when he was named to the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 class of 2002.

He brought Walker on board around that time to help with the increased patient load, especially traveling with the Hogs to their away games. In 2003, they moved into their current clinic, renamed Millennium Chiropractic & Rehab, at 2744 E. Millennium Place in Fayetteville.

Since then, things have changed a little bit, Whitelaw said.

“I’ve got young kids now, and so I don’t travel as much as I used to, because I need to stay here and coach ball games and be a dad,” he said.

Now he spends one day a week on campus treating athletes, who also come to his office for treatment. And when the UA hosts a game or meet, he’s on call.

The arrangement works well for Whitelaw, who got into his field largely to work around sports. It allows him to continue taking care of the athletes, he said, “but more importantly, it gives me time to be a dad. And the family’s got to come first, obviously.”

A native of Magnolia, Whitelaw graduated from Parker College of Chiropractic in Dallas. He then served a year-long sports fellowship at Logan College of Chiropractic in Phoenix.

After his fellowship, he and his wife, who’s from Texas, wanted to be close to family. They looked at Fayetteville and liked it — and then there was the opportunity to work with the Razorbacks.

He interviewed with Broyles and Dean Weber, the head trainer at the time, about possibly working with the Razorbacks’ sports medicine program as their team chiropractor.

Though “nothing was set in stone,” he said, they were open to the idea, so he and his wife moved to Fayetteville and he opened his clinic.

Growing and maintaining a successful practice has meant having to learn the business end of things — “the not-fun part of it,” as Whitelaw terms it.

“Health care providers get into it because we want to help and treat patients,” he said.

But he takes the clinic’s hectic schedule as a sign that they’re doing the right thing.

“We’re taking good care of people and we’re getting them better, and therefore I think we’re busier as a result,” he said.

“And then there’s good old trial and error,” he said laughing. “We learn from our mistakes.”

He says he was fortunate to do his fellowship at a private practice, where he could observe and ask questions about running a clinic. Plus, he’d gained plenty of management experience running restaurants in high school and college, he said.

“We’re kind of an atypical chiropractic clinic,” he said. “We don’t do maintenance care, we don’t do long-term packages of care. We try to address your problem and help you get through it as quickly as possible and then you can go on about your life.”

He and Walker employ five staff and five interns, who come from the UA, Blue Cliff College and Petra Allied Health.

Whitelaw sees the clinic expanding over the next few years, both in size and in therapies and rehabilitation services it offers.

“I like taking care of people,” he said. “I truly do believe that I’m doing what I was put on earth to do. So I enjoy my job, I enjoy taking care of people and I think we do a very good job doing it.

“But honestly, by the time I’m done taking care of who I need to take care of from a professional aspect, I put on my dad hat.”

He enjoys fishing with his 13-year-old daughter, sharing his love of golf with his 11-year-old son, and doting on the newest addition to the family — a son who’s now 9 months old.

The ardent music lover likes teaching his kids “good ol’ classic rock and roll.”

And though he says he can’t carry a tune in a bucket, he taught himself to play the drum set he keeps in his office. After hours, he likes to crank up the music on his headphones and drum along.