Through Sports Medicine, Sports Performance, and our Institute of Scholastic Sports Science and Medicine (ISSSM), we provide students with the highest level of care, state-of-the-art strength and conditioning training, and a unique opportunity to pursue academic research interests.
Sports Medicine Mission Statement
Our mission is to ensure the optimal health and performance of Harvard-Westlake student athletes through the continuous pursuit of new knowledge and application of best practices in the field of sports medicine. We collaborate with community physicians and physical therapists as well as Harvard-Westlake's sports performance staff to provide a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to student-athlete health and welfare.
Dunford Rodill,Director of Sports Medicine
Kelli Arnold, Sports Medicine
Alex Calderon, Sports Medicine
Tiara Wells, Sports Medicine
Jesus Puentes, Sports Medicine
Sports Performance Mission Statement
Through a holistic approach to training, we aim to provide our student athletes with the movement and mental tools necessary to realize their highest skill potential. Multidisciplinary training methods and continual communication with coaches and sports medicine staff physically prepare the student athlete for the rigors of competition and increase their resilience. Our positive-coaching atmosphere is designed to instill a championship attitude and educate our student athletes so they can navigate their lifelong journey toward health and fitness.
Jeff Crelling, Director of Sports Performance
Kyle Casey, Sports Performance
Hannah Johnson, Sports Performance
Sport Psychology
Sport psychology focuses on training the student-athlete’s mind like training any other muscle in the body. An athlete’s psychological state has a direct effect on sport performance, making it an essential training component. The ultimate goal is is to support student-athletes in gaining a mental edge over competitors and develop unshakeable confidence.
HW sport psychology provides holistic and individualized mental skills training to meet the specific needs of athletes and teams. Mental skills training provides an in-depth understanding of specific tools that athletes learn, practice, and master in order to perform consistently in practice and competition.
Areas of sport psychology training include, but are not limited to:
- Building confidence
- Support student-athlete mental health
- Developing overall mental skills
- Playing “in the zone”
- Maintaining consistency in practice and competition
- Managing performance anxiety
- Overcoming mental roadblocks
- Enhanced communication skills
- Leadership development
- Preventing and managing burnout
- Injury recovery
- Team cohesion
Kat Scardino, Sports Psychology
Institute for Scholastic Sports Science and Medicine
Headquartered at Harvard-Westlake School, the Institute for Scholastic Sports science and medicine is a research and education facility established in 2009. ISSSM brings real-world research partnerships to campus and creates educational opportunities for our students in the process. We sponsor student-initiated sports science research and help bring the academic and athletic domains at school together, each supporting and strengthening the other. To make this possible, we have created a secondary school institutional review panel and formed research partnerships with outside institutions.
The mission of the Institute for Scholastic Sports Science and Medicine is to create educational opportunities by promoting sports science and related research that benefits the community, improves athletic care, and enhances athletic performance.
The Institute of Scholastic Sports Science and Medicine was founded to address the need to study young athletes and the opportunity to facilitate those studies while creating educational opportunities that will immediately benefit our students and contribute to their care.
Historically, the care of adolescent athletes has been based largely on research involving older athletes, which may not take into account significant developmental differences between these two groups. At the same time, Harvard-Westlake has long sought to offer real-world research opportunities to its students, but the fact that the local research community centers around universities and teaching hospitals some distance from campus has made this challenging.
ISSSM brings real-world research opportunities directly to our students. Students are co-researchers as well as research subjects, and the research can then be incorporated into our curriculum.
We view ISSSM as an opportunity to further our institutional objective of bringing the academic and athletic domains at school into closer harmony. Almost two-thirds of our students participate in interscholastic athletics. Why not use athletics to generate interest in the STEM disciplines and vice versa?
To make this possible, we have created an institutional review panel to facilitate this type of research as well as student-initiated human-subject research and ensure that it is safe, appropriate, and protective of student privacy and confidentiality. This panel, chaired by the head of school, lets us address all of the questions that arise in this type of research and provides standards to be applied in evaluating and conducting such research.
We believe this is the first institutional review panel created at the secondary school level and that the ISSSM program also is the first of its kind. We hope that both provide models for real-world, campus-based, secondary-school research that will benefit our immediate school community and the community at large.
Research Publications >
Sports Nutrition
Nutrition underpins every aspect of sports performance. The way athletes fuel their bodies has a significant impact on strength, speed, fitness, mental skills, recovery, menstrual health, body composition, and energy balance. Having adequate nutrition is absolutely crucial to successful physical performance.
But, more importantly, athletes are students and people first, and nutrition plays a key role in academic success, mental health, emotional well being, and body confidence. HW Sports Nutrition exists to support our student athletes not only on the field and in the weight room, but also in the classroom, at home, and in social settings. We believe that every student athlete deserves to be fueled and supported holistically, and we strive to provide a positive setting for athletes to learn to fuel their bodies without judgment.
HW Sports Nutrition offers team based nutrition education, classroom education, 1 on 1 nutrition counselling, and support for game day nutrition.
Our services aim to help student-athletes:
- understand how much food they need
- ensure they consume enough macro and micro nutrients to support health & performance
- learn how their bodies respond to various foods
- develop body confidence
- learn more about menstrual health and how it relates to nutrition
- feel confident in their nutritional choices
- utilize on campus food services to fuel their bodies
- prioritize sleep
- prioritize mental health
- learn how to select and prepare food for themselves if needed
- feel supported and encouraged to care for themselves mentally and physically
Links:
http://www.ncaa.org/sport-science-institute/nutrition
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3805623/