Athletic Coach Details

Joshua Schmidt was born on a bus. He loves learning and as he was growing up he sometimes made his mom “read” the graphs in science books to him instead of bedtime stories. He grew up in northern Idaho and is therefore no stranger to driving hours to compete with other schools. The college years saw him studying chemistry and physics at Reed College and later earning a Ph.D. from Cornell. Part of his research took him to Germany for a year, where he loved to get a Kinder Überraschung egg on the way home from the lab, constructing the little toy inside that evening. A desire to have a more obvious impact on the lives of others led him to teaching, and he spent 17 years teaching physics and chemistry in boarding schools, most recently at Williston in Massachusetts, before joining Hotchkiss in 2023 to teach physics. Dr. Schmidt enjoys games of all types but particularly board games. He has over 300 board games in his collection, and many evenings you will find him playing one of them in Garland with his family: spouse Naomi, a librarian; and children Solomon and Norman.