Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) is developing a new nutrition program to help student athletes excel both on and off the field. The initiative will encompass all sports at the university.<\/p>\n
The university’s athletic department plans to use funds from this year’s “Night at the Nest” event to support this comprehensive nutrition program.<\/p>\n
“As a student athlete, nutrition is the main component of everything that I do,” said Olivia Black, an FGCU softball player. “From on the field to off the field, it energizes me through my activities and even throughout my homework and having to use my brain.”<\/p>\n
Athletic Director Colin Hargis emphasized the importance of enhancing nutrition within the department.<\/p>\n
“The best way I can describe it right now student athletes are able to have meal plans and food as part of their overall scholarship package,” said Hargis. “But beyond that, a lot of that boils down to team by team and program by program.”<\/p>\n
FGCU aims to provide consistent nutrition options for its athletes.<\/p>\n
“When it’s something that’s program wide and athletics wide, we give the athletes a consistency on what we’re doing every day,” said FGCU Volleyball Head Coach Thais Baziquetto-Allen.<\/p>\n
The new plan includes a fueling station with grab-and-go snacks and a training table offering meals for student athletes.<\/p>\n
“Some people have such busy schedules that they don’t even have time to make food for themselves,” said Black. “So it would be really convenient to be able to pick something up or be able to grab a protein shake to go.”<\/p>\n
Baziquetto-Allen believes the program will also benefit recruitment efforts.<\/p>\n
“That will pair up FGCU with other schools that already have that,” said Baziquetto-Allen. “It’s a part that we are lacking and it’s a part on the recruiting process like we get asked about nutrition and things like that.”<\/p>\n
The “Night at the Nest” event will take place on Friday. An online silent auction is open for those who wish to contribute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) is developing a new nutrition program to help student athletes excel both on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,33575],"class_list":{"0":"post-68747","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cape-coral","8":"tag-cape-coral","9":"tag-cape-coral-headlines","10":"tag-cape-coral-news","11":"tag-fgcu"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}