Meeting the nutritional needs of over 600 varsity athletes on campus at UBC is no easy task. Combined with this, UBC students are also keen to learn more about the role nutrition plays in developing and supporting high performance athletes. UBC Athletics and Recreation and the School of Kinesiology saw a unique opportunity to partner and create a position that would serve to meet both of these needs.
Emma McCrudden
Emma McCrudden is a Sport Dietitian who has worked with Olympic and Professional athletes since 2008 in the UK and Ireland, before moving to Canada in 2013. She has worked with numerous teams and individual athletes through both summer and winter Olympic cycles. In 2016, she began her role here at UBC which involves teaching sport nutrition on the Kinesiology program and educating high performing UBC athletes on the role nutrition plays in improving their health and performance.
Upon beginning this role, Emma identified a number of similar nutrition concerns amongst the UBC varsity athletes. She decided that developing a website filled with well researched resources would be the most efficient way to meet the needs of the large group of varsity athletes. Over the last year, she has supervised a team of UBC Students who edited her existing and new material to create the Go Thunderbirds Nutrition website.
Over 50 information sheets with the latest information on sport nutrition are available as free downloads from this website. There are also over 60 recipes which are aimed at helping varsity athletes cook healthy, inexpensive dishes. Averaging approximately 1,000 views per month, athletes access information sheets on topics such as vitamin d supplementation in the winter, healthy eating during exams and what to do if they get a cold or flu. Having this resource available online means that more of Emma’s time can be spent working with individual athletes on more complex nutrition challenges, running group workshops, supervising over 200 athletes a year in cooking classes and teaching Kinesiology students about the role of nutrition in elite sport performance!
Check out the Go Thunderbirds website here:
http://gothunderbirds.ca/sports/2016/7/5/nutrition.aspx