Paul Valukas joined the Wisconsin Olympic strength & conditioning staff in 2021 as an Assistant Strength & Conditioning coach. He currently oversees the Badgers' women's hockey programs. Valukas was elevated to the position of Assistant Director of Olympic Strength & Conditioning in the Fall of 2022. In this new role, Valukas will serve as the Olympic strength & conditioning department’s liaison with campus academic programs/student educational organizations and will additionally serve as the S&C department's lead for performance technologies at the Kohl Center.
Valukas joins the Badgers after most recently serving as the head strength & conditioning coach for the Ontario Reign, the American Hockey League affiliate of the National Hockey League's Los Angeles Kings (2019-2021). Working with the LA Kings strength & conditioning staff, Valukas created and implemented the Reign's off-ice strength & conditioning programming, return-to-play protocols and rehabilitation programs for injured players.
He previously also worked with the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks (July 2018 & July 2019) to aid in the execution of the team's physiology testing group to execute the strength testing battery and serve as a volunteer assistant strength coach.
Valukas worked as the Director of College and Professional Athlete Development at the ETHOS Colorado Athlete Center (2018-19) where he created and oversaw daily operation of the athlete development program and constructed an educational series on nutrition, recovery and management of life stressors, in addition to creating a biannual coaching clinic to create lines of communication between sports performance coaches, sport coaches and medical professionals.
He served as a Sports Performance Fellow (2017-18) at the University of Denver while completing his master's degree in sport coaching (August 2018). In this role, he oversaw the physical development, athlete assessment and energy system training of the Denver men's and women's tennis programs throughout the 2017-18 season and also assisted with the men's hockey program under the Director of Sports Performance. Valukas also served as a volunteer Assistant Sports Performance Coach (2017) and Sports Performance Intern (2016) during his time at Denver.
Valukas began his career working with the Badgers as a strength & conditioning intern (2016) working with Wisconsin's hockey and basketball programs, in addition to working with the football program (2015-16). During this same period, Valukas also completed an internship in Sports Performance with Neuro Explosion Performance Training in Madison, Wis., assistant in the administration of off-season training for professional hockey players. He graduated with his bachelor of science degree from the University of Wisconsin in rehabilitation psychology in December 2015.
Valukas holds certifications as a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and Reflexive Performance Reset (RPR).
