As athletes are in and out of the gym constantly, for daily practices or workouts in the weight room, it is a necessity to eat healthy in order to fuel the body. The women’s sports teams such as dance, cheer, volleyball, and soccer have begun to maintain healthy diets and take nutritious supplements to compete to the best of their abilities through all aspects of their sport. These athletes noted they have seen improvements in their performances when they eat healthy versus when they don’t. Junior Brookelyn Gibson, Har-Ber Silver Stars dance captain, believes that cardio plays a big role in how much you should be eating.
“Athletes should be eating healthy, especially if there’s a lot of cardio involved, they need to be eating carbs so they have some to burn, but then also protein to fuel their bodies,” Gibson said.
Not only is the dance team keen on healthy eating, but cheer has been discussing diets and eating habits more frequently as well since their competition season is coming up. They want to be in the best shape possible due to their plans to go to nationals, which adds almost a month to their season. Senior Isabella Hamby is in agreement with their coach, Kortni Butler-Smith, about eating healthier.
“Coach Kortni just talked about how we have an extra month since we are planning on going to Nationals, and we only have a very limited amount of people doing elite skills and we need to keep our bodies safe and healthy the best way possible,” Hamby said.
Althetles, including senior Marina Gonzolez, who is a part of the school soccer team and Comets club soccer team, sees as well as feels improvements in their athletic performance when they do not eat healthy before practicing.
“When I eat really bad the day before I’ll feel really tired or just like your body reacts weird. I think it makes me feel better and feel better about myself,” Gonzalez said.
Athletics that practice in the morning have seen issues with their teams not eating at all before those early practices. Gibson’s team keeps one another accountable in the dietary aspect so that their practices go as smoothly as possible and they improve all together.
“People choose not to eat, or eat unhealthy and that often makes them dizzy and very tired,” Gibson said. “We are really big on that this year, that people need to be eating, especially bananas and healthy stuff in the morning.”
As a result of unhealthy or insufficient morning eating, athletes begin to feel and perform weaker than usual. Volleyball coach Cassie Loyd has made some changes in their nutritional approach to prevent some of the effects that come with morning practice. One of these changes is adding a weight and nutrition coach.
“We’ve added daily vitamins and we added drinking proteins after lifts to help build muscle faster,” Loyd said. “We’ve also added Coach Cameron’s knowledge and healthy conversations on what our bodies need to perform the best.”
Vitamins have been incorporated into many athletics at Har-Ber the past few years due to many coaches hearing about the benefits. Last year soccer started to take them, and now dance and volleyball has joined in incorporating them into their morning routine. Whether the teams are lifting or resting, they are including vitamins and chocolate milk in their diets.
“I think that this year our nutrition is more considered”, Gonzalez said. “I think those help us during weight room days and have influenced our performance for the better.”
The volleyball regimen now includes taking daily vitamins along with drinking chocolate milk after practice and workouts. They take multivitamins and chocolate milk which help energy and recovery. Senior, Macon Butler is one of the volleyball players who does these things daily and discusses how these supplements help her performance.
“The vitamins help our energy,” Butler said. “The multivitamins have vitamin D and helps joint health and recovery. The chocolate milk helps our protein intake and helps our muscles recover faster and grow.”
Thanks to the coaches and staff members and extensive research put into these athletes’ dietary needs, their performances are said to be the best they have ever been.
“I have seen great muscle be put on the girls where they are jumping higher, moving faster and just all around quicker athletes,” Loyd said.