The first Tuesday of each month, we interview someone from Charlotte Latin Athletics with twenty questions to help the CLS community get to know some of our athletes, coaches, and supporters a bit better.
 
This month we are introducing Michela Hewitt, our new strength and conditioning coach. Born and raised in Colorado, Michela earned her undergraduate degree in exercise science from University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) while competing for the Mountain Lions in cross country and track & field. She went on to earn a master's degree in Organizational Leadership from Regis University (Denver, CO), and has served as a strength and conditioning coach at both the high school and collegiate level. Read on to get to know a bit about Michela, and why she was willing to move so far away from home to work with the Hawks.
 
1. How would you describe your family life and upbringing in Colorado?  
I lived in Frederick, Colorado my whole life. It's a very small town in between Denver and Fort Collins. There's a lot of farm land, only one high school, and it's a twenty-minute drive to get to a mall. My graduating class had barely 100 students. My mom, Julie, is a high school math teacher and is very pragmatic. She's very supportive, but she's a realist. My dad, Steve, is a manager for Marriott, which is nice when we go on vacation. My sister, Bella, is three years younger than me. Like most siblings, we can get on each other's nerves, but we are really close now. She just graduated from college with a degree in chemistry and is working at an environmental lab in Colorado. Our family is really close and we did a lot of hiking and boating together in the summer – anything outside.
 
2. What was high school like for you?  
I loved school. I was the kid that would beg my parents to go to teacher conferences so they could hear how well I was doing. I loved school and I loved learning. I always thought I was going to go into the medical field and my high school started this four-year biomed program just as I was entering that took place before and after school. We researched different pathways in the body, learned about the challenges of developing new medicine and new medical devices, and did a lot of after school projects. We were encouraged to follow our interests, and I loved it.  
 
3. What about sports? How did you evolve from your earliest athletic experiences to being a collegiate runner?  
My parents had me try a lot of sports. Soccer and t-ball were the earliest ones, then I tried swimming and began gymnastics. I gravitated toward softball in middle school, but I found that I was not very good at the hitting part. I loved running the bases. When I got to high school, I was still competing in gymnastics and was very focused on that, but decided to try volleyball because a lot of my friends were doing it. I also tried track my freshman year, because it seemed like everyone at my school did track. A lot of coaches of other sports encouraged it, and it was also a draw for the social connections. I competed in the 100 and 200 and said I was not running any farther than that, but later in the season I was entered in the 400. I wanted to stop after 200 meters, but when I finished it was clear to my coaches that I was not a sprinter and this would be my new event. It was tough at the time because gymnastics was a district sport, so I was competing in both track and gymnastics at the same time for school. Eventually, my junior year, the 800-meters became my event and they taught me to do the triple jump. I went to states for the 400-meter, the 800, and the triple jump.
 
4. How did you make the decision to quit gymnastics?
It was really hard to make that decision, because it was such a big part of my life and I had so many friends through gymnastics. I knew I wasn't going to pursue it in college, but I was starting to think I could run in college and my coaches were advising me to put my focus toward that. My parents were very helpful. My mom sat me down and said if competing for a collegiate track team is your goal, then you have to dedicate yourself to it every day. She promised that if I was going to go for it, that she would push me, and remind me any time I didn't want to go to practice or do the work, that this was a choice I had made. I was happy I waited until junior year to focus on running. Being on the team is fun, but running is not super enjoyable. I think if I had committed to track too early, I would have burned out.
 
5. What did recruitment look like for you?
My club track team had two coaches that had a lot of collegiate connections and they really helped me. All of the schools I was considering were in Colorado, and when I went to visit them, two stood out. I preferred the coaches and the team environment at one school, but liked the campus and academic offerings better at the other school. Again, my parents were really helpful. They advised me that while it was important to have a good relationship with the coaches, I was ultimately going to college for the education and needed to make a decision based on where I wanted to go to school. It's easy to get tunnel vision and just focus on sports, when academics should come first in your decision making. Once I chose UCCS (University of Colorado Colorado Springs), I got to know the coaches and the team and I was very happy with my decision.
 
6. How was the transition from high school athlete to collegiate athlete?  
Athletically, it was tough, because my coach called me in the summer and said, "You're on the cross country team, here are your summer workouts." I had never run cross country. I'd never even done a mile, much less a 5k. My high school track workouts never involved running for more than 15 minutes at a time, but that was just the warm-up for the summer cross country workout. I showed up for my first practice, and it was awful. Thankfully, the coach was understanding and helped me build into it. Outside of running, I loved my experience at UCCS. As a division II athlete, you get to have a regular student experience. I am also really grateful that my coach really saw us as human beings, not just athletes. He wanted us to learn things in his program that would help us in life, not just sports, so it was a great balance between working hard in school while still being competitive athletically.
 
7. What were some of the highs and lows of your collegiate career?  
As a freshman, I was chosen as an alternate for a distance medley relay at indoor nationals, and that was really exciting for me. It came at an important time, too, because I was feeling unmotivated after achieving my goal of making a collegiate team. I wasn't sure what my purpose was after that, but realizing that I could compete at nationals gave me something else to strive for. My junior year, I achieved my top goal of being All-American, so that was another high point. One of my biggest lows was failing a class my freshman year. That was devastating for me. It was a chemistry class and I took it again with a different professor and had a much better experience. Athletically, I had a couple of injuries my senior year. I made it to the national meet, but didn't make it on the podium. It wasn't the ending I wanted, but the whole journey is really the important thing – it's not how the last meet goes.
 
8. You'd gone to college planning to get a degree in medicine. What caused you to change course?
Going into my junior year, I was taking this prep class for the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test) and we had an assignment to write a personal statement of why you want to be a doctor. I couldn't think of a single reason. I had done some hospital internships and it just wasn't something I was passionate about. Then I got an internship with a physiologist at the U.S. Olympic/Paralympic Training Center, and I loved it. We ran lactic threshold tests with triathletes and wrestlers and it was so interesting to see the variance in different athletes. We ran force plate testing every day. I also got to help athletes who needed modifications, and that really forced me to learn a lot about how to work muscles in different ways. That experience changed my direction, but my relationship with my collegiate strength coach was also influential. She was always excited to see us and genuinely cared about us as people. She was motivating and inspirational. I loved lifting and I thought, "I could do this. I could be that person for other athletes."
 
9. Once you had that epiphany, how did you make it happen? 
The coaches I'd worked with at the Olympic Training Center helped me figure out next steps and what certifications would be needed. They even helped me find a grad assistant position. I was already getting my undergrad in exercise science, so my degree stayed the same. I got a paid internship as well, and it just seemed like everything fell into place perfectly. It felt meant to be and all pointed in the same direction.
 
10. You started coaching right after your Olympic Training Center internship, first at a high school and then two different college programs. What did you gain from those experiences?
My first job as a strength coach was as an assistant at Castle View High School. It was one of the few that had a strength program, and each team came in for an hour at a time throughout the week. It was a good place to start. I didn't know much about programming, so having hands-on experience with a mentor was really helpful. They also had an Olympic lifting club and I didn't know how to do a lot of those, so I would stay late and the head coach would teach me so I could learn. Next, I got the grad assistant position at Regis University, and they assigned me to cross country, track and field, and girls' lacrosse. I created and ran their programming, but I was hoping to be mentored through the process and that wasn't the case. That summer, I looked for another internship because I wanted to keep learning. I found one at Colorado School of Mines and it was exactly what I needed. I helped with football, men's and women's basketball, wrestling, baseball, and some swimming, and I was learning so much. They asked me to stay on for the school year, and assigned me to baseball and women's basketball. Going into the second semester, the head strength coach and the other assistant left, so suddenly I was overseeing football and all these other sports. It was really challenging, but I learned quickly how much goes into running a strength and conditioning program, other than the coaching part. Things like organization, ordering supplies, scheduling – just a lot of administrative things that I hadn't realized went into it and that really helped me grow.
 
11. What drew you to apply at Charlotte Latin, so far from home?
I thought I would stay at Colorado School of Mines, but after the head strength coach left, I knew they'd probably bring in a new person once we got through the year, and that person would likely bring in their own staff. I started looking for jobs and was really open to going outside of Colorado and considering both high school and collegiate openings. When I saw the opening at Charlotte Latin, I was a bit anxious about applying because it was such a big move. But everything else felt comfortable. I thought taking a job at a high school might be less serious or less structured, until I looked at the Latin website. It seemed clear that there were high expectations here. The day I came to interview at Latin, I had a huge realization in the conference room. It didn't feel like a typical interview; it felt like a conversation. I wasn't nervous and I started to think that I really wanted this to happen.
 
12. Your start date was just over a month ago. What does your role include and how is it working with Coach Paige?
I'm teaching a P.E. fitness unit for 7^th, 8^th, and 8^th grades, and working with Coach Paige to provide strength training for sports teams before and after school. Working with Coach Paige has been really good. Some coaches I've worked with before have been very set in their ways, but he wants to bring our ideas together to make the Strength Center a really good space for the students, so he's very open to new things. It's also been great to see how inspiring and motivating he is with the kids.
 
13. How about Charlotte? What are your impressions so far, and what has been the biggest adjustment for you?
I think Charlotte has a big sense of community. There is so much to do and everyone is so inviting. I've been doing run clubs in the evenings and on the weekends, and they've been very open and welcoming. The biggest adjustment is definitely not having my family just a twenty minute drive away. They're coming to visit soon though. My mom will be here for Labor Day weekend, and my cousins are coming for the Panthers game when they play the Broncos.
 
14. Alright, let's finish up with some fun questions. If time and money were no issue, where would you travel and why?
Italy. To eat the food and go sightseeing. I went when I was ten and have always wanted to go back.
 
 
15. Do you cook? If so, what is your specialty?
I love to cook. I love making Italian food. Specifically, homemade pasta. My family is Italian, so our tradition is to make homemade ravioli and homemade spaghetti for holidays. We make homemade ravioli and meatballs together for Christmas.
 
16. How would you describe your perfect day?
I'd sleep in a little, but not super late. Then I'd walk to a coffee shop for coffee, go for a run, then spend the day at the beach with family and friends before going to a nice Italian dinner.
 
17. Is your love for Italian food the reason for the tattoo on your arm?
My sister and three of my cousins all got this tattoo together. We wanted to have a matching representation of our family and our Italian traditions. My family means a lot to me, and I love being able to share a meaningful tattoo with my sister and cousins.
 
18. What is a hobby, talent, or skill most people don't know that you have?
I like painting sometimes. I wouldn't say I'm amazing at it.
 
19. What is your favorite exercise to teach?
The hang clean. It's so complex and there are a lot of different things to think about, but it's nice to see it when it "clicks" for an athlete.
 
20.  What do you enjoy most about coaching?
I love the variety. Each person moves differently and processes information differently. You have to be quick on your feet and adjust to give cues that work for different people. And when I'm working with girls, I love seeing their comfort and confidence in the weight room grow.