Portwood pushes Coyote football forward

When University of South Dakota head strength and conditioning coach Clete McLeod went in for a hip procedure he found out he needed open heart surgery. It meant he was going to be handing his responsibilities with the football program for months to Natalie Portwood, who joined the Coyote staff a little more than a year ago.

Football has the most athletes at the school and they lift the most weights. By that measure, the coach in charge of their training has a lot on their plate.

It wasn’t exactly Portwood’s choice to be in the spot she was in but no one is complaining about that. Not Portwood, not McLeod, and not the Coyotes, who have a young, energetic and knowledgeable staff member playing a vital role in helping them all collectively push the rock up the hill.

“The biggest thing for me is seeing the athletes make progress and develop,” said Portwood a 2020 graduate of the University of Nevada who grew up in North Carolina and Texas. “Watching them get better in the weight room and turn that into getting better on the field is the best part of this. I get to help them get there.”

There are no official records being kept but it is believed Portwood, who also works with the women's basketball team, is one of only a handful of women whose job includes being the top assistant strength and conditioning coach for a Division I football program.

If it was four decades ago – after one got over the shock of there being such a thing as a weightlifting coach for a football team – the idea of a woman guiding the training of football players would have been deemed preposterous. Even now, it’s unique in collegiate football. 

How can somebody who didn’t play football be qualified to do this job? How can a program put a woman in such an important position?

It’s not like that, Portwood has discovered. 

“The challenges in working with football players were originally internal,” said Portwood, who has worked with athletic programs at Nevada, North Texas and Southeastern Oklahoma State.

“I would internalize my communication with them. The stigma of being a female working with football might have made my approach a little soft at first. This was before I came here. What I’ve learned since then is that as long as you show the guys that you care and that you know what you’re talking about, it doesn’t really matter if you’re a guy or a girl. They just want to know that you’re a good coach and that you care about them and their development.”

Portwood loves sports and was intending to be a physical education teacher when someone came into her college classroom one day and told her they were looking for strength and conditioning interns. 

“I took on the internship to try and get some experience,” she said. “Then I found out it really challenged me. I love the environment of the weight room. I love the energy of athletes challenging themselves.”

Though she wasn’t a college athlete herself, Portwood is very competitive. It likely helps her identify with the challenges of the athletes she works with. 

“Natalie is one of the most competitive people I know,” McLeod said. “Everything is a competition to her. It could be about whether she is taller than you or not. Or it could be about playing pool or cards or just about anything else. She is going to find a way to make it competitive. I think everybody appreciates that about her.”

Based on the interview process, he knew he was getting a high-character person and a hard worker. He did not know he was going to be handing over the football program to her for an extended period of time or what kind of coach she really was.

He does now.  

“She has really demonstrated a very high level of attention to detail,” McLeod said. “Her communication skills are off the charts. She can get to the heart of an issue very quickly and communicate her intentions very effectively. She’s really good at being a momma bear. She loves the guys up when they need it but she can also be very strict when they need it. They respected her immediately for that.”

When health issues pulled McLeod away from the program, Portwood was called on to tap into all the kinds of things she’s paid to preach and teach. Her rapport with the team and her authority – not to mention additional administrative responsibilities – were going to present a distinctive challenge. Perhaps intimidating, but also an opportunity. 

“Once I got into the swing of things it went pretty well,” Portwood said. “The players really helped me with that. There was a lot of senior leadership that had been part of the program and understood what offseason training was supposed to look like. They were able to help me get the guys into shape and make sure everyone was locked in and focused.”

The high character and hard work part Portwood delivered on as soon as she got to campus. McLeod has since then come to understand that this assistant is all that and then some.

With a knack for talking to the players and setting them straight when the need arises, Portwood has realized some of her own potential while helping others realize theirs.

“She’s someone who people should be paying attention to,” McLeod said. “She’s going to do some great things.”