Kinesiology graduate students coach young athletes during immersive internship 

Not all internships are created equal. Some are too soft and some are too hard, but some are just right when they provide on-site lodging, dining and a paycheck as well as nearby beaches to visit during days off.

That’s the internship nirvana that awaited university students this summer at IMG Academy, a prep school for athletes in southwest Florida.  

When the opportunity arose to apply for positions as strength and conditioning interns at the prestigious school, a handful of UNC Charlotte students studying for a Master of Science in Kinesiology with a concentration in strength and conditioning went for it. Only Jordan Middleton and Lila Scire made the cut.

They beat out 325 students from across the country for two of the 10 strength and conditioning coaching slots IMG Academy offered interns at its camps this summer.

“I saw the opportunity and I was like, wow, this is nothing like the other internships you see come around,” Scire said. “I have a lot of experience working with high school-age kids — the demographic we’d be working with — so that drew my interest, and I also knew IMG Academy was a really big program for training athletes.”

“Throughout the interview process there was a spark in my brain that this was a big deal,” Middleton said. “And once there, I realized for sure that I wanted to be a strength and conditioning coach.”

For 10 weeks, College of Health and Human Services graduate students Middleton and Scire lived in the dorms at IMG Academy, ate in same cafeteria as the campers and worked eight hours a day as part of an immersive internship that had them helping improve the performance of young athletes while they learned valuable coaching techniques from school’s professional staff.

IMG Academy is a leading sports-focused boarding school and training facility that also offers sport camps, online coaching and college recruiting. The school originally began in 1978 as the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy where tennis greats Serena and Venus Williams, Andre Agassi, Boris Becker and others trained as kids.

These days, the academy is best known for producing professional athletes from a variety of sports such as basketball (Anfernee Simons and Arella Guirantes) baseball (Tommy White and Blaze Alexander) and golf (Emiliano Grillo and Nelly Korda). For six consecutive years, former IMG student-athletes were selected in the first round of the NFL Draft.

The Academy spans 400+ acres. According to the New York Times, it offers 63 tennis courts, 32 fields, 73 courts for basketball and volleyball and more than 100 psychologists, nutritionists, trainers and other specialists on staff.

“I was blown away,” Scire said about seeing the campus for the first time. “It was eye opening. It didn’t quite feel real. It took a minute to put it into perspective that this was real life.”

Coaching kids

The UNC Charlotte graduate students were brought in to assist the school’s strength and conditioning staff with coaching, running workouts and developing programs for summer camp participants ages 8 to 18.

Only one week after starting their internship, Middleton and Scire had already made an impression on IMG Academy senior strength and conditioning coach Kinsey Propst. “They’ve done exceptionally well,” she wrote in an email. “They’ve integrated smoothly with both their cohort and our staff, asked thoughtful questions, and have already shown a natural ability to teach and connect with the kids.”

Having graduate students connect with young athletes is important to UNC Charlotte Lecturer Darnell Clark, Ed.D., the strength and conditioning concentration program director for the Master of Science in Kinesiology program. 

“Working with young athletes helps our students with their communication skills,” Clark said. “They’re working on their coaching voice, their delivery, and their feedback to the athletes.”

Both Scire and Middleton liked working with kids though there was a slight learning curve.

“I’ve worked with collegiate athletes so this demographic of 18 and under was completely new to me,” Middleton said. “I had to learn quickly how to talk to and interact with younger kids. I loved being around them. They can really test your patience, but you also have those who want to be there, who want to learn from you and how strength and conditioning can apply to them as an athlete,” Middleton said.

“Some kids were totally there to work and wanted to be there. Some kids were there only because their parents sent them,” Scire said. “I learned different ways to coach the different athletes I worked with each week because you never knew what you were going to get. Being flexible in finding different ways to communicate with athletes was a big takeaway.”

strength and conditioning are key to performance

During their internship, Scire and Middleton showed the campers there’s more to strength and conditioning than lifting weights. They worked on timing, hand-eye coordination, balance and more. It was intentional training to improve human performance.

“We’re not training body builders. We’re not focused on one muscle. We’re not focused on getting you bigger. We’re training athletes,” Middleton said. “We want you to be mobile. We want you to be able to move in all planes of motion. We want you to be able to move your shoulder and that ball and socket joint. Mobility, recovery, moving in all planes of motion — those are our goals as strength and conditioning coaches.”

“With the younger kids, we played games to get them moving and changing directions. It’s not just about getting strong and big; it’s about rounding out your athlete to create a healthy individual and a mentally and physically stronger individual,” Scire said. “Strength and conditioning methods have the ability to create a well-rounded athlete, a healthy athlete who is going to have less risk of injury and more mobility.”

be a sponge

Scire and Middleton have many takeaways from their internship at IMG Academy.

“The more you experience things, the better you will be. I think it’s the best way to learn. I took everything I could from the internship,” Scire said. “Before the internship began, Dr. Clark told us to be a sponge. So, I was being a sponge.”

Middleton left Florida “knowing how to communicate with all types of people and being able to pivot really, really fast,” she said. “I now know how to be resilient as a strength and conditioning coach and not just on the floor but also as a person and professional.”

The students have admirable plans after they graduate this spring. No doubt their experiences from the Academy will factor into their futures.  

Scire, who’s an anatomy and physiology teaching assistant, has an interest in becoming a professor and also wants to work as a strength and conditioning coach with a college, high school or professional team.

Middleton has her sights set on being a strength and conditioning coach at an NCAA Division 1 college. And like Scire, she has an interest in furthering her education with a Ph.D. in biomechanics.

“If you’re an athlete you have to know how to optimize your performance on the field or court. As strength and conditioning coaches, that’s what we were there for. Working with athletes and seeing them grow was my favorite part of the internship,” Middleton said. “Seeing them push themselves in the weight room and applying it to their sport, that was my golden ticket.”

Clark sees more immersive, high-impact internships like the one at IMG Academy in the future for the strength and conditioning master’s concentration.

“Our students currently have exceptional opportunities in the local region interning with sports organizations such as Charlotte FC, Michael Jordan’s 23XI NASCAR team and the United States Performance Center,” Clark said. “I also want them to branch out and pursue highly competitive, nationally recognized internship experiences that will elevate their development as future professionals.”