Ermalinda Spies is in her fifth season as the jumps coach for the Blue Dragon Men’s and Women’s Track and Field Teams.

Spies is married to Blue Dragon head coach Robert Spies.

The Blue Dragons have three All-American and seven national qualifiers in the jumps in her tenure.

Previous to coaching at Hutchinson, Spies coached eight seasons as the jumps and sprints coach at McPherson College.

The Bulldogs recorded 21 first-team all-KCAC and two NAIA All-America honors and broke six school records.

Prior to McPherson, Spies spent seven years as an assistant at Pittsburg State University. The Gorillas produced three NCAA Division II national runners-up, 18 All-Americans, 62 national qualifiers, 13 MIAA individual conference champions and 12 school records broken. As a team, Pittsburg State won the 2005 MIAA championship and finished among the top 20 six times at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field National Championships.

Prior to Pittsburg, Spies was the horizontal jumps coach at Virginia Military Institute for three seasons. During her tenure, she coached three triple jump conference champions, five sprint champions and 10 All-Big South performers.

As an athlete, Spies represented her native country of Albania for five years in European and world events, including representing the nation in the 1994 World Championships and the 1994 European Junior Championships.

She was a four-time NCAA Champion in the triple jump and nine-time NCAA Division II All-American in the long jump and triple jump at Western State University. Additionally, she was named the 1999 NCAA Division II Athlete of the Year and Western State inducted her into its Athletics Hall of Fame in 2008.

In 2015, Spies was inducted into the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Hall of Fame for her accomplishments as an athlete.

Spies earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Western State in 1999. Spies earned a Master's degree in exercise physiology from Fort Hays State.

The Spies’ have two children, Davian and Sofia.