Ethel Walker School
September 24, 2019
Walker’s varsity soccer opened the season with five wins, including a 5-2 road win at MacDuffie, a 2-0 victory over Greens Farms and Hamden Hall, 6-0 at Kent and 6-1 over Christian Heritage.
Head Coach Michael Smith, in his first year at Walker’s, has implemented several key training elements for the 2019 team which focus on strength and conditioning. Coach Smith has his athletes spend a large portion of practice rolling their muscles before warming up and after training. In addition to implementing this routine, Coach Smith also was pleased to bring Melanie Michaud, who works with college, professional and Olympic athletes as a strength and conditioning coach for CATZ (Competitive Athlete Training Zone), to work with the players.
CATZ trains top athletes in numerous sports, including Misty May-Treanor, gold medalist in volleyball in Beijing 2008. In addition to working for CATZ, Michaud is currently the head strength and conditioning coach of Trinity College Women’s Soccer team, where she was previously the assistant coach. Michaud was a four-year member of the University of Rhode Island (URI) Women’s Soccer team and a two-time captain. She was also a High School All-American.
Coach Smith said, “Melanie is an expert in human performance and we’re fortunate to have a great relationship with her. Melanie played a key role in putting our summer conditioning program together and followed that up by creating our in-season strength program. I think the players really enjoyed their time with Mel and we’re looking forward to her next visit when she’ll introduce phase two of the program.”
The varsity soccer team is led by captains Regan Kerecz ’20, Alaina Vermilya ’20, Ava Strohmeyer ’19 and Lizzy Strapp ’21. Supporting the team as assistant coach in his second year is Karl Schwoerke, also a member of the math department. The next game is September 25 at Berkshire, with the first kick set for 3:00.
