Dr. Candice Hofmann was a three sport athlete at Marcellus High School in New York. She won a State Title in Soccer as well as 3 – Regional Championships in Volleyball and a League Championship in the Pentathlon for Track and Field. She was named First team all-state for volleyball and has been inducted into the Greater Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame along with her fellow state soccer teammates. 

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After high school Candice went to Syracuse University where she was a 4 year letter winner on the Division 1 Women’s Soccer Team. Candice was a goalkeeper but also played a few games at midfield. Candice received her undergraduate degree from Syracuse University in 2008 in Civil Engineering and worked for 4 years designing airports in the area. However, her true passion has always been sports so she went back to school to pursue a career in an area she deeply loved. Candice attended the State University of New York at Cortland and received her Master of Science in Kinesiology with a 4.0 GPA. This degree led her to an opportunity to have a summer internship with the Gatorade Sport Science Institute (GSSI) at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida.

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The summer internship turned into a full time job where Candice was responsible for testing and evaluating the student – athletes on campus as well as the professional Gatorade athletes. The athletes were run through 2 testing sessions that would evaluate their carbohydrate vs. fat burning throughout exercise, as well as body composition, hydration levels, nutritional intakes, muscle strength and power as well as anaerobic (short term) exercise capacity. These test results were then shared with the athletes and their coaches to help develop the appropriate methods to improve their athletic performance. 

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While the opportunities at GSSI improved Candice’s knowledge and laboratory skills she had a deeper need to ask her own questions about athletes and the ways we can better help develop them as they are transitioning from childhood to adulthood. At IMG and as a coach of high school students Candice continued to see a rise in season ending injuries among the athletes she was working with, and she wanted to know if there were answers to helping prevent some of these injuries and therefore decided to go back to school to gain her doctorate degree.

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After some different interviews Candice found the perfect fit with the University of Salford out of Manchester, England to complete her degree. Candice wanted to know the impact being a single sport versus multiple sport youth athlete might have on the lab performance of a countermovement jump, leg strength and balance. Along this path Candice found that the impact of where a child is within their growth spurt may have a greater impact on potential injuries than what sport or sports they are playing. In the end the athletes who had gone through their growth spurt performed significantly better than those who were before or during their spurt. It was also found that those past their growth spurt that were only participating in one sport did perform the lab test better than the multiple sport athletes. In 2022, Candice completed her degree and earned her PhD in Sport Science from the University of Salford. However, Candice found out that the joy of research is that you typically end up with more questions than answers at the end. The need for more answers is what has driven her to start her own business so that she can continue her work with youth athletes and hopefully help create the safest and best ways for kids to develop through, as she likes to call it, their “baby giraffe” phase. 

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Candice has an extreme passion and love of all things sports and desperately wants to see all the youth athletes around her succeed in whatever way they want. She loves coaching soccer, volleyball and track and field where she is determined to help her athletes to grow in sport and in life and to push the limits of what they think is possible. Candice believes sports are meant to build kids up and give them confidence so that they can become successful humans on whatever path life takes them.