When the Texas Athletics performance nutrition team promoted a nutrition consultant in 2012, they could not have predicted the growth that has followed since then.
“I started working here full time in 2012, but prior to that I was a consultant here for five years,” said Amy Culp, director of performance nutrition and clinical wellness. “During those five years I was here working one-on-one with the athletes. Since I started here in 2012, it’s just me and 550 athletes.”
Culp, who studied food and nutrition at San Diego State University, has since expanded the team to include five full-time dietitians responsible for the nutrition of the school’s 21 sports teams, helping ensure the teams maintain the university’s standards for how they treat their athletes.
“We’re trying to be world class in every aspect and help our players be the best in the country,” Culp said. “From a nutrition standpoint, our role is to help them be the best-nourished players in the country and understand how to nourish their bodies.”
Each nutritionist works with a different team to ensure that all athletes receive the attention they need for their sport and different schedules.
“All of our athletes have different needs, different goals and different training times,” Culp says, “and all of that changes what they eat.”
The performance nutrition team has developed not only staff but also facilities and technology.
The team has expanded its facilities to include the Texas Athletics Nutrition Center, or TANC, where Culp and her team work with chefs to provide a variety of nutritious meals and educate players to better understand their nutritional needs.
“We have nutritionists working with the players, talking to the players, doing what we call live plate coaching,” Culp said. “We provide a general education and then we dig in to what each individual player needs. We’re able to do that because of the size of our staff.”
Culp has also been successful in introducing the use of an app that allows teams to more precisely track what players are consuming. Designed by a team that worked with NFL sports dietitians, “Teamworks Nutrition” has features designed for sports nutrition.
Culp and her team integrated menu items into the app and made it easy for athletes to input their meals within the app, which helps them better understand their needs and how to best cater to them.
“When you’re well-nourished, you feel good,” Culp said, “and this is just a small part of helping them achieve these amazing goals that they have for themselves. It’s so fun to be a part of that, and a part of something bigger.”
For Culp, it’s not just the care for the players that makes his experience with the Texas Athletics worthwhile.
“I feel so blessed to be able to do this job every day,” Culp said. “I have a great team that loves what they do and they take really good care of the players.”
