Zachary Schmidt joined the Milwaukee track & field team in the fall of 2016, working with the team’s pole vaulters. He will enter his tenth season with the Panthers in 2025-26.
In recent seasons, Schmidt has helped guide Milwaukee’s vaulters to recent success including Kate Watson, who set the program record for outdoor pole vault at 4.05 meters and was just shy of qualifying for the NCAA West Preliminaries in 2023. Ella Laughbaum and Isabel Roloff established their careers early with top-ten heights during both the indoor and outdoor seasons. Hailey Soriaga joined the program's top-ten in 2024-25 during both the indoor and outdoor seasons.
Schmidt also helped lead both Dylan Sieloff and Evan Bartelsen into the top-four in the team’s record books in both the indoor and outdoor seasons during the 2022-23 campaign.
Schmidt continued his trend of success during the 2020 indoor season. He helped produce three podium finishes at the Horizon League Indoor Championships, including a runner-up finish by Watson.
He once again led a young group to solid results during the 2019 season. Of the seven Panthers that finished on the podium during the indoor and outdoor championships, six of them were underclassmen.
That comes on the heels of coaching a pair of freshmen to the podium during both indoor and outdoor in 2018. Both Jayde Wollenberg and Jack Johnson scored in their first collegiate season in pole vault for Milwaukee. Johnson's performance at the outdoor championships was one the highlights of the season for Schmidt's pole vaulters, as Johnson battled through injury and adjusted his approach at the last minute to bring home a fourth-place finish.
In just his first season with the team, Schmidt helped coach the first men's indoor pole vault champion for Milwaukee since 2013 in Nate Scherer. The sophomore cleared a personal-best height at the conference meet to bring home his first league title.
Schmidt joins the Panthers after a successful career at UW-Oshkosh, where he earned seven letters with the Titans including four seasons as a member of the outdoor track & field team that won both the Indoor and Outdoor NCAA Division III Championships his senior season.
