UNCA's DeWeese to Shape Up US Canoe/Kayak Team

Karen Chávez (Asheville Citizen-Times) August 16, 2010

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Photo: John Coutlakis/jcoutlakis@citizen-times.com

Brad DeWeese, UNC Asheville's director of sports performance, has been named as strength and conditioning coach for USA Canoe/Kayak. Here he works with U.S. under-23 slalom team member Austin Kieffer, 21, of Asheville, at the UNCA track.

Olympic dreams are once again simmering in the DeWeese family.

Two years after Jenny DeWeese competed in the U.S. Olympic Trials for marathon but missed the cutoff for Beijing, husband Brad DeWeese has been tapped to help the U.S. whitewater slalom team get to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. 

DeWeese was recently named the strength and conditioning coach for USA Canoe/Kayak, which is a position newly created by the Charlotte-based organization to get the U.S. national team Olympics-ready. 

 “My heart is in the Olympic movement,” said DeWeese, 35, UNC Asheville's director of sports performance. 

 “Brad will enable our athletes to be the best they can be and be the best competitors they can be. He will assist in helping us to qualify for the Olympics,” said William Irving, National Teams Director with USACK, the national governing body for the Olympic sports of whitewater slalom and flatwater sprint. 

 National slalom athletes, many of whom live and train at the U.S. National Whitewater Center in Charlotte, have only worked on strength and nutrition a couple of times a year with coaches in Colorado and California.

“Strength and conditioning is an area we've been lacking in for a while. We saw the need to have someone locally,” Irving said. “Brad brings an expertise in strength and conditioning and has a varied background working with USA Weightlifting and working with a multitude of sports.”

A native of Asheville, DeWeese played baseball at Reynolds High and then worked as a student coach at Western Carolina University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in sports physiology and a master's in nutrition. He is working on his doctorate in coach education and elite athlete development through N.C. State.

DeWeese started at UNCA in 2001 as assistant track coach and developed the school's strength and conditioning program. He became head coach and then moved into a faculty position while also coaching his wife for a shot at the Olympics, as well as former Bulldogs sprinter Natalie Pearson in a bid for the 2008 Olympic track and field team for her native England.

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Tags: Canoe Slalom, US National Slalom Team