UW-Oshkosh graduating senior Ella McDevitt, a U.S. Air National Guard veteran, pauses for a moment at the Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2 location in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where she served as a member of the strength and conditioning team as a summer intern.

Ella McDevitt has never backed down from a challenge. After serving six years in the U.S. Air National Guard—including a deployment to Saudi Arabia and Qatar—she set her sights on finishing her bachelor’s degree. Now a senior majoring in strength and conditioning at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, McDevitt is balancing two summer internships as she prepares to start graduate school at The Citadel military college in South Carolina this fall.

McDevitt, a first-generation college student from Sun Prairie, is the daughter of two Air Force veterans. Her story is an example of how hands-on learning and mentorship at UW–Oshkosh can open doors to what’s next. 

“Ella is eager to learn as much as she can in her clinical experiences,” said Craig Biwer, Strength and Conditioning Program Director at UWO. “Her maturity, attention to detail and desire to do things the right way is an example that all of our future strength and conditioning students should follow.”

In this Q&A, McDevitt reflects on how UW-Oshkosh helped prepare her for graduate study and shaped her path toward coaching tactical athletes in the military 

What led you to UW-Oshkosh?
In January of 2023, I was working with a UW-Oshkosh alum named Shawn Anderson at his gym in Madison, which was called the Badger Den at the time (now Ritual Barbell). I was an assistant strength coach there working with adults who had performance goals and the general population. Shawn told me he went to UWO and that it has a strength and conditioning major. I didn’t even know that was a specific major; I thought everything was just kinesiology. Once I heard about UWO’s program, I thought, I only have my associate’s, and it’d be great to get my bachelor’s. I looked into it, and I thought, yeah, I’m going there. (Note: Anderson, who majored in kinesiology with an emphasis in strength and conditioning, graduated in 2015. The Strength and Conditioning major began at UWO in 2021.) 

What stood out to you about the strength and conditioning program?
I started at UWO Fall semester 2023. The program had everything I was looking for with lots of hands-on experience; it had specific strength and conditioning courses like program design and strength and conditioning principles. The first semester confirmed that I’d made the right decision. 

What drew you to strength and conditioning in the first place?
What drew me to strength and conditioning was the powerlifting competition called the 500 club when I was deployed. I had to hit a combined 500 pounds with our bench, squat and deadlift. It was just something fun that kept us motivated, and it pushed me to learn more about lifting and programming. That’s what got me into coaching. Once I started learning the science behind it, I got really into it. Even when I was in the military, I knew I wanted to work in a performance-related field.

Can you tell us more about your military background?
Both my parents were active-duty Air Force. My mom was an E4, a senior airman, and my dad was an E5 staff sergeant. They both worked in avionics, doing maintenance on aircraft. I always had a lot of respect for military service, and I knew I wanted to serve, too. I joined the Air National Guard when I was 21, after getting my associate degree at Madison College and doing a semester at UW–Madison. 

I served from June 2019 until June 2025. I was a munitions technician, and my main job was line delivery crew chief. That meant I trained other airmen on how to deliver bombs to the flight line, and I did the deliveries myself, too. I was deployed to Saudi Arabia and Qatar from 2021 to 2022. 

Tell us about your two summer internships.
One of them is at Norfolk Academy, a private high school in Virginia. It’s an eight-week strength and conditioning internship focused on their football and middle school programs. I help lead warm-ups and cooldowns, coach athletes on their lifting technique and assist with exercise programming. I also work with middle school students and help out with logistics like setting up equipment and monitoring lifts. It’s a lot of hands-on coaching and gives me the chance to work with both high school and middle school athletes in a structured school environment. 

The second internship is at Navy EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) Group 2, where I’m part of a tactical strength and conditioning team. I coach alongside the strength coaches who work with elite military personnel, helping operators maintain their physical readiness for deployment. I also built programs for their athletes specific to each operator (Note: Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group Two in Little Creek, Virginia, is an Echelon IV command that mans, trains and equips their subordinate mobile units, mobile diving and salvage, training and evaluation units and expeditionary support units to perform combat operations worldwide. Source, Navy Expeditionary Combat Command) 

How have your experiences at UWO prepared you for those internships and your future goals?
At UWO, we get a lot of hands-on experience. In clinicals, we do assessments, run sessions, coach athletes and write programs. So going into these internships, it wasn’t a shock. I had already done a lot of what I’m doing now. That helped me feel more confident.

Craig (Biwer, the Strength and Conditioning program director at UWO) helped me find both of my internships. He was a huge help. I’d always go to him with questions about where to apply, what programs were good, and he would give me advice about grad school and what steps to take next. He made everything easier to understand. The program sets a high standard, and that made me want to hold myself to that standard, too. 

Learn more:  

Study Kinesiology and Athletic Training at UWO 

Study Strength and Conditioning at UWO