When the Texas Athletics performance nutrition team promoted a nutrition consultant in 2012, they couldn’t have expected the amount of growth it has seen since.
“I started full-time in 2012 and prior to that, I was a consultant here for five years,” said Amy Culp, the director of performance nutrition and clinical wellness. “I’d come in and work with athletes one-on-one for those five years. After I started in 2012, it was just me and 550 athletes.”
Culp, a food and nutrition graduate of San Diego State University, has since grown her team to consist of five full-time dieticians who manage the nutrition of the school’s 21 sports teams. This allows the team to uphold the University standard in their work with the athletes.
“We are going to be world-class in all that we do, and we’re going to help our athletes be the best in the country,” Culp said. “From a nutrition perspective, our role is helping to make sure that they’re the best-fueled athletes in the country, and that they understand how to fuel their body.”
Each dietician is in charge of different teams so that all athletes receive the attention required for their specific sport and their differing schedules.
“All of our athletes have different needs and different goals, and they’re working out at different times,” Culp said. “All of those things change the composition of what’s on their plate.”
The performance nutrition team has not only developed its staff but also its facilities and technology.
The team has expanded its facilities to the Texas Athletics Nutrition Center, commonly referred to as the TANC. The TANC is where Culp and her team can work with chefs to provide various nutritious meals, while also educating the athletes to better understand their nutrition needs.
“The dietitians are there, working with the athletes, talking with athletes, doing what we call live plate coaching,” Culp said. “We’re providing the general education and then we drill it down to what individual athletes are needing. We’re able to do that because of the staff size that we have.”
Culp also managed to successfully introduce the use of an app that allows the team to better track what their athletes are consuming. Designed by a team that worked with an NFL sports dietician, “Teamworks Nutrition” has features designed for sports nutrition.
On the app, Culp and her team have integrated their menu items so that athletes can easily enter their meals in the app. This allows them to have a better understanding of the athlete’s needs and how to better accommodate them.
“When they fuel well, they feel well,” Culp said. “It’s a small part of helping them to achieve these amazing goals that they have for themselves. Being able to be a part of that and a part of something bigger is so much fun.”
For Culp, it’s not just caring for the athletes that makes her experience with Texas Athletics worthwhile.
“I feel very lucky that this gets to be my job every day,” Culp said. “I have an awesome team that loves what they do, … and they do such a great job of caring for their athletes.”
