Dustin Malandra is the head strength and conditioning coach for Cabrini’s sports team. Malandra has been working for Cabrini for six years. Before working at Cabrini, he was doing minor strength and conditioning jobs and attending graduate school at West Chester University. While attending school there, he was already working his first year and a half at Cabrini.
During the day he worked a full-time job and at night attended classes. He commuted every day from Downingtown, Pennsylvania to Cabrini and West Chester.
“It was tiring,” Malandra said. “I’d come out here and then I’d drive all the way to West Chester, and then I’d drive back to Downingtown and vice versa. The last year I had class in the middle of the day, so I’d have to drive all the way to West Chester and then drive back to work and then drive back to Downingtown.”
“Dustin is very helpful to our training and he is very knowledgeable about what we are doing,” Katherine Buckman, junior psychology major, said. “He makes each sport an individual lifting program that supplement our practices. He also pushes us in the weight room and really cares.”
Not only is he a dedicated strength and conditioning coach but also a husband and father. He has a wife and an eight-month-old daughter. He and his wife got married last year and welcomed their new born daughter into their family less than a year later. The couple share similar professions and tend to help each other out with work.
“She’s a physical therapist so we like to bounce ideas off of each other,” Malandra said.
Between working and having a family, it’s safe to say Malandra has his hands full. He finds ways to balance his responsibilities despite how demanding his job is.
“This job is a lot of hours,” Malandra said. “After a couple of years I was like well you need that work life balance.”
“He’s very creative with his strength workouts, he’s always learning something new,” Justin Henry, sophomore marketing major said. “He’s about to go to a seminar this break to learn something and teach us it when he comes back.”
His schedule in the fall is pretty jam packed.
“The fall is a lot busier than the spring. The teams that are in the off season in the fall lift a lot more than the teams that are in the off season in the spring,” Malandra said.
Not only does he help students weight train he also makes schedules for training. He tries to work the schedule around the student’s class times. They tend to work on a first come first serve basis. Bigger teams such as lacrosse, baseball and swimming get two different lifting times per day.
