Oct. 22, 2007

Notre Dame, Ind. – Craig Cheek has joined the Notre Dame athletics department as an assistant strength and conditioning coach and will work specifically with the Irish men’s and women’s fencing and women’s lacrosse teams. Cheek most recently served as the head strength and conditioning coach at Nicholls State, after previous stints as an assistant strength coach at Minnesota-Duluth and Bluffton (Ohio) University.

Cheek developed strength and conditioning programs for 12 varsity sports during two years at Nicholls State in Thibodaux, La. (2005-07), while demonstrating and supervising proper training technique. He also assisted with developing the athletic training staff’s rehabilitation programs and supervised various graduate assistants and student interns.

He was an assistant strength and conditioning coach at Minnesota-Duluth during the 2004-05 academic year, working directly with the football and women’s basketball teams while supervising strength and conditioning programs for baseball and women’s tennis. Cheek also conducted sport-specific measures of speed, strength and agility at Duluth while providing nutrition and supplement education to student-athletes and facilitating workouts for summer strength-camp participants.

Cheek previously had been a volunteer strength coach at Bluffton for 16 months, starting in January of 2003. He designed an offseason strength program for the football and men’s basketball programs while helping monitor, evaluate and motivate the strength training progress for the Bluffton student-athletes.

His experience also includes working from 2001-02 at the Athletic Edge Performance Center in Scotch Plains, N.J. While at Athletic Edge, Cheek designed training programs for athletes ranging from middle school to the professional level. He also implemented various training methods and developed a physical fitness program for adults.

Cheek spent three months during the summer of 2001 as a strength and conditioning coach with the Detroit Tigers. His primary focus was supervising a comprehensive in-season program for two of the Tigers minor-league affiliates. He also worked with the Tigers athletic training staff on the conditioning program for injured players and maintained the upkeep of the strength training facility.

A 1997 graduate of Bluffton with a bachelor’s degree in health and physical education, Cheek later received his master’s of education in developmental kinesiology from Bowling Green State in May of 2004.