By Lizzy Thomas

Italian soccer team A.C. Milan’s performance specialist Jose Soto worked with the boys’ varsity soccer team as well as the girls’ JV soccer team Feb. 9.  Soto’s visit marked an important event in the burgeoning partnership between the elite soccer club and Harvard-Westlake.

Soto, who lives in Milan but was most recently in South America working with youth teams there, ran tests on the Harvard-Westlake soccer players using a machine that measures the time between heart beats as well as an ultrasound used to measure body composition.

“The [heart rate] technology is not new,” said head trainer Milo Sini, who was part of a group from Harvard-Westlake that traveled to A.C. Milan’s facilities this past summer, “but what Milan Lab has done is taken all this great technology from around the world and put it in a package.”

Both technologies could be used to maximize training efficiency, explained trainer Sandee Teruya. “Typically starters condition more even though they play more,” said Teruya, “but it may make more sense to have subs condition more, and this technology can be used to quantify that.”

Soto is expected to return in August or September to speak to students in a special assembly.