Diet and nutrition key component for Cougar football team’s success
BYU offensive lineman Corbin Kaufusi laughs as he bites into a piece of chicken during lunch Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016, at BYU Legends Grille on the campus of Brigham Young University in Provo. ISAAC HALE, Daily Herald
BYU running back Trey Dye bites into a spear of asparagus during lunch Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016, at BYU Legends Grille on the campus of Brigham Young University in Provo. ISAAC HALE, Daily Herald
BYU wide receiver Nick Kurtz, right, and defensive back Grant Jones eat during lunch Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016, at BYU Legends Grille on the campus of Brigham Young University in Provo. ISAAC HALE, Daily Herald
BYU linebacker Va'a Niumatalolo, left, looks up from his meal as his teammates talk during lunch Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016, at BYU Legends Grille on the campus of Brigham Young University in Provo. ISAAC HALE, Daily Herald
BYU linebacker Butch Pau'u, right, shares some fries with linebacker Isaiah Kaufusi, center, as Pau'u hands the plate towards offensive lineman Ului Lapuaho during lunch Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016, at BYU Legends Grille on the campus of Brigham Young University in Provo. ISAAC HALE, Daily Herald
From left, BYU offensive linemen Austin Hoyt, Kyle Johnson and Kieffer Longson chat during lunch Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016, at BYU Legends Grille on the campus of Brigham Young University in Provo. ISAAC HALE, Daily Herald
BYU wide receiver Nick Kurtz, right, and defensive back Grant Jones eat during lunch Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016 at BYU Legends Grille on the campus of Brigham Young University in Provo. ISAAC HALE, Daily Herald
Any given afternoon on the BYU campus you can find Cougar football players and other athletes from other sports at Legends Grille.
It’s lunch time and they need to fuel up.
Getting young adults to choose food wisely — fruits and vegetables over french fries and sugary drinks — isn’t always easy.
Diet plans and nutrition are becoming as essential as weight rooms and academic tutors when it comes to college football and BYU is no exception.
“We monitor a lot of things,” BYU coach Kalani Sitake said, “but we can’t make every decision for every young man. We teach them what we can and let them govern themselves, basically. We give them guidance and resources to be a great athlete here. We’re always going to try to put our players in the best position to get what they can and that has to do with nutrition, academics, the weight room, all the stuff we can provide for them, we’re going to do.”
Rachel Higginson’s resume is impressive: She has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Dietetics from BYU, did an internship at Saint Francis Medical Center in Illinois and has been a dietitian at Central Utah Clinic and Provo Canyon School.
About ten years ago Higginson started consulting with BYU athletes about diet and nutrition. She now works 20-30 hours a week on campus as a dietitian for the athletic program.
“When I first went to school I wanted to work in the ICU with pediatric patients in a hospital,” Higginson said. “The jobs I got kind of led me in this direction and I’m so glad because I love it. It’s incredible.”
She said she loves the job because the athletes are so willing to implement her suggestions and strategies.
“Every person that comes to see me wants to do what I say,” Higginson said. “They’re not like, ‘Oh, great, here comes the dietitian, she wants to tell me I can’t eat all the foods I love.’ They want to change their lifestyle and want to improve their health, because it will improve their performance. They are just so eager to make those changes. It’s inspiring.”
Higginson and her staff provide individual diet plans for BYU football players and other athletes. They consult about weight loss, weight gain, sports performance, low energy issues, nutritional deficiencies, eating disorders, food allergies and intolerances and even diabetic athletes.
“Every meal plan for each athlete is individualized,” Higginson said. “I do have cookie cutter plans but then we still have to change it for the individual athletes. It has to be individualized because food feels different to different people. We take into consideration height, weight, age, their ideal bodyweight and even genetics.”
BYU athletes have two nutrition centers on campus, which provide basic foods such as bagels, fruit and string cheese. They are given $9 a day on a Fuel Card for meals. When Cougar teams travel Higginson will often look up the menus of the restaurants on the itinerary and give the coaches and players options.
Higginson takes her job seriously — “It can make or break a game,” she said — and shares with the athletes studies such as this one: A group of cyclists were asked to not eat breakfast and ride until they were fatigued. That number turned out to be 55 minutes.
“Then they took that same group had them carbo load,” Higginson said. “They cycled at the same speed until they were fatigued and they were able to cycle for 120 minutes. You have to have a diet plan to have sustained energy. I think they (the coaches) are just starting to see the impact more and more. If you don’t factor in nutrition, you lose that competitive edge.”
Higginson said she is scheduled as much as two weeks out with appointments and with more than 600 athletes on campus it’s impossible to meet all of their needs with her current staff.
“In the future, it would be great to have not only a dietitian with support staff but a team of nutrition specialists,” she said. “We could have every single athlete, when they first come to BYU, meet with someone to immediately get them on a meal plan. Right now the coaches encourage the athletes to meet with us and some come on their own.”
Higginson said former Cougars who are now professional athletes often return to BYU to consult or confer with her. They confess they should have listened to her more when they were in Provo.
“The thing that is tricky with a lot of athletes, they have done very well eating a subpar diet because they have crazy genetics,” she said. “What they don’t realize is how much better they could play if they do it the right way. When people figure that out, it’s a paradigm shift.”
BYU senior guard Parker Dawe is a firm believer in the power of diet and nutrition. The former Pleasant Grove standout had to gain 80 pounds to get to 300 and to be able to compete on the Cougars offensive line. He consulted with one of Higginson’s staff, Dan Wilcox, who provided Dawe with a diet plan.
“The plan was written out to a ‘T’,” Dawe said. “There were even times of the day when I needed to eat. It was a huge help. That’s honestly how I put all the weight on.”
Dawe said redshirt freshmen Thomas Shoaff (275 pounds) and sophomore J.J. Nwigwe (278) are offensive line teammates who are trying to put on weight and following a diet plan to do so.
“I’m always messing with J.J.,” Dawe said. “That he’s looking a little thin and that he’s going to become a tight end or defensive end or something. Then he always reminds me about how fast he is.”
Dawe said one of the best examples of a BYU player following his diet plan is former safety Dan Sorensen, now playing for the Kansas City Chiefs in the NFL.
“Some guys are super dedicated,” he said. “Danny was 100 percent on point with his diet all the time. I always saw Danny walking around with a little container of rice and chicken. He was always eating something that was part of his meal plan. Then you have some guys, every time you see them they’ve got fried chicken in their hand.”
Dawe works summer camps with prospective college football players and they are always asking what they can do better.
His advice?
“Live in the weight room and eat right,” Dawe said. “A lot of kids going through this process don’t get that. When you follow a diet and nutrition plan, that’s when you see your body change. Any elite athlete in any sport, take care of their bodies. You see it in the way they look and the way they play.”