The top Sports Medicine and Performance staff in the G-MAC is bolstering its ranks for the coming 2026-27 school year with an addition to its staff.

Hillsdale's Sports Medicine and Performance department, voted the top athletic training staff in the conference in 2024-25, is adding Rhonda Smith as an Assistant Sports Performance Coach. Smith will be the Chargers' second full-time Sports Performance coach and has been working with the department since April.

Smith's responsibilities include directing strength and conditioning programs for the Hillsdale College softball, men's golf and women's swimming and diving teams, while also assisting Head Sports Performance Coach Mitchell Schoenborn with managing strength and conditioning for the football team.

A veteran in the college athletics world, Smith comes to Hillsdale with an extensive background in both coaching and sports performance, most recently at NAIA Lourdes University in Sylvania, Ohio.

From February 2018 to March of 2026, Smith served as the Gray Wolves' primary Strength and Conditioning Coach and also as Lourdes' Senior Woman Administrator. She was responsible for a massive overhaul of Lourdes' strength and conditioning programs and oversaw training for as many as 15 sports, helping the Gray Wolves to be competitive in the Wolverine-Hoosier Athletic Conference, including four NAIA National Tournament berths. During her time at Lourdes, Smith also served as the women's soccer program's Associate Head Coach from 2018 to 2021, and as an Adjunct Instructor in Lourdes' Exercise Science department from 2021 to 2026.

Prior to moving full-time into strength and conditioning, Smith had spent over a decade as a successful college women's soccer coach. Beginning with a student coaching job at her alma mater, Concord University (WV), in 2005, Smith got her first paid coaching job as an assistant at Hillsdale's G-MAC rival, Ashland, from 2007-10. After a successful stint with the Eagles, Smith moved up to Division I, where she spent time as an assistant women's soccer coach at Duquesne University, Youngstown State University and Bowling Green State University. Her success as an assistant led to two seasons as head women's soccer coach at Bluffton University in 2016 and 2017, as well as a role as Assistant Professor of Health, Fitness and Sports Science at Bluffton, before moving to Lourdes in the winter of 2018.

A graduate of Concord University with a Bachelor's of Science in Physical Education and Health, Smith also played four seasons on the Mountain Lions' women's soccer team as an undergraduate. She was a part of Concord's 2002 WVIAC regular season and conference tournament championship team, the first Mountain Lions squad to win a conference championship in the sport.

Smith earned her Master's of Education in Applied Exercise Science from Ashland during her time as assistant coach with the Eagles, and has completed numerous certifications in the sports medicine and performance world, including a Precision Nutrition Level 1 certification that will add to Hillsdale's current staff.