Ibrahim Diallo

Responsibilities

During my internship with the University of Hawaii Athletics department, I assisted strength and conditioning coaches across football, women's soccer, men's and women's swimming, and track and field. My daily responsibilities included demonstrating movements, delivering coaching cues, setting up equipment, and general weightroom operation management. As the internship progressed I took on more independent responsibilities, including conducting and analyzing force plate jumps, working with return to play athletes, and eventually supervising and running full training sessions on my own.

Accomplishments

My greatest accomplishment was earning the trust and responsibility to supervise and run a full track and field strength session. I went over the lift with the athletes, communicated the goals of the session, and ran it the way a full time coach would from start to finish. Receiving constructive and encouraging feedback afterward felt like a genuine reflection of how far I had come since day one.

Learning experience

The greatest lesson I took away from this internship is that relationships and communication are central to coaching. Technical knowledge and programming skills matter enormously, but an athlete who trusts you will respond to your coaching in a fundamentally different way than one who does not. They don't care about you what you know unless they know you care.

What advice would you give?

Do not wait to be handed opportunities. The interns who usually get the most out of an experience are the ones who show up early, stay engaged, ask good questions, and step up before anyone asks them to. Your supervisors are watching how you carry yourself every single day, not just when you are directly being evaluated. Take the time to learn every athlete's name, be consistent with your energy, and treat every session as a chance to get better at something specific.