Michaela Peterson joined the SPU sports medicine / athletic training staff in August 2024.
Peterson was born in Indianapolis, but grew up in the Eastern Washington town of Medical Lake, 15 miles southwest of Spokane. She attended Medical Lake High School, where her interest in athletic training took root, thanks in part to an athletic training that was offered for the first time during her senior year.
She subsequently enrolled at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, earning her degree in kinesiology, with a minor in sports psychology, in 2021. She went on to the University of Utah for her master’s, and in the second year of that program did her clinicals at the University of Washington.
“I started out helping with all of the sports because I was just floating in the training room,” she said of her time at the UW. “Then I really locked in with women’s basketball, and for the spring, my last month I was with the baseball team.”
Basketball was Peterson’s main sport as an athlete. She also ran cross country and track, and those two sports will be her primary focus at Seattle Pacific. But she will have the opportunity to help out with other sports as needed in conjunction with Jason Durocher, SPU’s Director of Sports Medicine, and fellow associate athletic trainer Shirley Chandler.
