Amber Wardrop joins Griffins as new strength and conditioning specialist
Jefferson Hagen
MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – Bringing previous experience working with Volleyball Canada and the Edmonton Elks, Amber Wardrop has joined MacEwan Athletics as the department's strength and conditioning specialist.
Her role will focus on working closely with the eight Griffins varsity teams, continuing to build out strength and conditioning programs to meet and enhance the performance goals of each squad.
Wardrop recently graduated from the University of Alberta's Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine with a Masters of Science degree, and also holds a Bachelor of Kinesiology from the U of A.
"I love sport science," said Wardrop, who is also CSCS certified with the NSCA (National Strength and Conditioning Association). "Getting the data of the athletes, finding out their loads and calculating what each person needs to improve on to be the best athlete they can be, I love that. The data behind it and knowing how to look at where they are and how to get them where we want, it's just such a fun process for me."
Wardrop was a high-level gymnastics athlete in her youth with floor being her speciality as she represented Team Canada at Junior Worlds in Finland when she was 13.
"It was amazing," she said. "I got to go to Europe. My mom came with me, and we stopped in a few other countries. It was a cool experience to see the community of people I'd never met, but we were all on Team Canada."
Soon after, though, she switched her main sport to volleyball and was progressing and developing well through the club level in the Edmonton area before a devastating knee injury at age 16 ended her athletic career but opened another door.
"I was practising with a few universities when I was in high school and then I tore my ACL/MCL/meniscus," said Wardrop. "So, I didn't get to continue on with that, but the physio process and healing process was what introduced me to that side of sport.
"I got really interested in biomechanics – how an athlete moves – and how you can predict where they're more at risk for injuries."
That dove-tailed into her Masters thesis, which she defended last January, on the biomechanics of volleyball athletes. She used Markerless Motion Capture technology and wearable force detecting socks to study University of Alberta Pandas volleyball players and Team Canada NextGen athletes.
It's certainly informed her process of compiling data on building strength for injury prevention and performance.
Along the way, Wardrop has also interned with the Edmonton Elks' strength and conditioning department (2022) and also worked as the lead off-season performance coach for Serdachny Hockey where she developed and executed their off-ice programs (2024).
More recently, she was with Volleyball Canada's national women's team in Vancouver earlier this summer, helping them prepare for Volleyball Nations League competition.
"That was an amazing experience," she said. "The strength and conditioning coach was awesome to learn under."
After wrapping up that experience, Wardrop started with the Griffins on July 14 and has already begun helping Griffins student-athletes.
"Being able to be involved with so many sports at MacEwan, it really gives me the chance to alter programs to each sport and each individual athlete, helping these student-athletes be the best they can be," she said.
"It's really the science of it, though. I don't want to be someone who just writes programs, I want everything I do to have a reason."
