Floreal Pedrazo, the new WIS Athletics Director, has had what can only be described as an interesting start to his new job. Instead of organizing Potomac Valley Athletic Conference (PVAC) games for the fall sports teams, he has spent the last several months figuring out how to safely bring students back to the Tregaron campus to participate in small group athletics skills sessions.

When the PVAC made the decision to postpone competitive play for the remainder of 2020, Floreal and other WIS administrators knew that a large part of the WIS community would be greatly disappointed. That’s why he wanted to at least organize these small group sessions, “to give our students a platform where they can still play the sport that they enjoy, with the safety guidelines in place, and in order to find some normalcy during these times.

“When I sent out the form to sign up for the skills sessions, I didn’t know what to expect. It’s wonderful to see that about 65% of students in the Middle and Upper Schools are participating, which is about the same number of students that typically participate in fall sports each year. So far, the feedback has been extremely positive. When I talk to students and parents, they often say ‘Thank you for giving us the opportunity to do this.’ I also have to thank them, because without them signing up, there would be no athletics program or skills sessions.

“However, it took some time to put everyone on the same page. I had to emphasize that there is no competition with these sessions; they’re an outlet and a way to create some normalcy. We’re not trying to create the next superstar athlete. That was an adjustment for some of the coaches and the families, but I had to remind everyone that some of the students had not really been able to do much physical activity in the last six months. Everything is going to look different for now. It will not be perfect, but it’s a start.”

When it came time to hire coaches for the fall skills sessions, Floreal made it clear that he wanted to find coaches within the WIS community. Luckily, many faculty members who had coached in previous years were willing to lead the sessions, and Floreal was able to hire a few parents as well. One of the soccer coaches, Ross Cameron, is also a new PE teacher at the Primary School, and Floreal is so happy to have a connection between both campuses, because that is one of his main objectives in his position.

When asked about his goals for the WIS Athletics Program, Floreal explains: “I want to build on what’s already working. We have some sports that have been very successful and others that need some more support. My objective is to find a balance to give all the sports an opportunity to compete on the highest and most professional level possible.” Obviously that competition has been put to the side because of the pandemic, but once the students are allowed to compete again, Floreal is excited to build up all of the teams. 

Additionally, “another objective is to be more transparent and improve communication across all departments and constituencies. I want to use the whole “village” to bring athletics to a different level, and that includes our Primary School. To be more specific, I want to build a pipeline of students that we could feed into our more competitive teams. I’ll give you an example: if we want to compete on a high level in tennis in the Upper School, but we don’t offer it in Middle School or Primary School, where do we get the tennis players from? If you ask someone when they leave Middle School if they want to play tennis and they have never held a racquet before, we won’t compete on the highest level. Introducing our youngest students to various sports doesn’t need to be competitive; it’s really just learning about it. So maybe once a week, in PS, they get to play tennis or basketball or volleyball, so at least they know the basics. 

“Combining both campuses with logic and structure of the sports program, and exposing the Primary School students to the sports in which we compete in Middle and Upper Schools, would have been one of the things that I would have tackled in the beginning of the year, if we did not have COVID.

“My other objective is branding and team spirit: I would like to bring more school spirit to WIS, and I think athletics is a great tool to do that. I would like to see consistency among the team uniforms and have merchandise for supporters to buy, in order to create more unity.”

Floreal has been passionate about sports for a long time. Growing up in Germany, he "started playing soccer at a very young age. Sports made it possible for me to come to the United States, and sports in general opened up a lot of doors for me. I came to the US in 2004 on an athletic scholarship to play soccer in Birmingham, Alabama. I played there for two years, and continued to play as I got my graduate degree in Atlanta, because I still had NCAA eligibility left. My English was not very good, but playing soccer was really an icebreaker for me. I was thrown into a team of 30 people, and despite not speaking the language well at first, they all became my friends, because we shared the language of sports. It made it easy to connect to people because we had similar interests."

After graduation, Floreal returned to Germany to work for the German Soccer Association for a few years. He also spent time in South America before returning to the United States to serve as director of a soccer academy. He then started coaching soccer at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. When he found out about the Athletics Director position at WIS, he was attracted to the School’s vision and mission. “I realized that my upbringing and background fit in with WIS’s values. From a young age, I was exposed to soccer and travel and meeting people from different backgrounds, and I realized that we are all citizens of the world. It attracted me to see that WIS has values that played an important role in my personal life as well.” 

He adds, “most of my jobs have always been sports-related, just because I was touched and impressed on how much sports influenced me and I thought, ‘if there is a way to give it back to students, I want to do it.’ I’m so happy to be able to use athletics to really shape young students. As I’ve talked to parents at WIS, some have expressed concern that because I competed in Division I soccer, that I would make every sport at WIS extremely competitive. I always explain that even though I like to compete on the highest level, I also think that students can benefit from the exposure to sports regardless of their skill level. Playing on any team, regardless of the skill level, the objectives are the same: learning about commitment and challenges to overcome, learning how to be a good teammate, and working together to reach a common goal. I would love to have teams that compete on the highest level, but in an ideal world, I would also like to have an option for students who don’t necessarily want to play on a very competitive level to be exposed to sports.”