Like everyone else on the strength and conditioning staff, Kim Andreola attends each of the Penn football team's practices. And as a first-year coach, she is responsible for working with the entire team.
That’s right: she.
Andreola may be the only female coach on the football sidelines but make no mistake about it: her gender in no way detracts from her qualifications.
As a former lacrosse player at George Washington, Andreola earned her stripes on the field. When she decided to continue working as a strength and conditioning graduate assistant with GW’s basketball team, she earned herself a master’s degree as well.
“She does a good job of bringing, as a former athlete, another aspect to the training that we all can identify with,” said sophomore offensive lineman Mike Pinciotti, who trained with Andreola this summer.
Not only is the Moorestown, N.J. native qualified in the world of collegiate sports, she also worked at the Olympic Training Center just months before the 2008 Beijing Games.
“I came in contact with a lot of people that were doing research — so they weren’t just helping our athletes, our medalists, they were doing research on them,” Andreola said. “The scientific approach to things was really interesting to me. It was a more holistic approach.”
At the Olympic Training Center, Andreola witnessed what she refers to as the “inspiring” work ethic of Olympians. She also became familiar with a more complete training method in which an athlete not only worked with his or her respective position coach, but a sports psychologist, a nutrition coach and strength-and-conditioning coach as well.
Drawing on the Olympic mode of athletic training, Andreola moved back to the Philadelphia area and began taking classes at Drexel University in order to earn another master’s degree in nutrition.
Though she had already worked with Olympic Athletes, Andreola wanted to continue to expand her strength and conditioning experience even further. Specifically, she wanted to work in football.
“It’s a huge sport, but it’s one of the few sports that I didn’t have that much experience with,” she said.
“I worked with Olympic figure skaters, bobsledders and all sorts of track athletes. But [football] is one of those ‘normal’ American sports, so it was really important to me to get that opportunity.”
Andreola contacted Penn football’s strength and conditioning coach, Jim Steel, last summer and offered to volunteer her services to the program. Before she knew it, she had a job with the team.
Andreola is responsible for improving the speed of the team as a whole, because, as she says, it is an element of the game that is “applicable to absolutely everybody, no matter what their position.”
Throughout the past spring and summer, she has been focusing on helping the players accelerate out of their stances.
“She did a lot of quick first-step stuff to make you faster off the ball, right out of your position,” Pinciotti said.
Andreola has also started working with other Penn sports teams, including the field hockey, women’s basketball and women’s track teams, but she will continue to serve as a strength and conditioning resource for the football team.
“It’s, again, more of a holistic approach to making sure everyone is the best shape possible, and we give them every advantage in order to succeed on the field,” she said.
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