ROSS TWP. — Professional sports teams employ nutritionists. Major college athletics departments employ a nutritionist.
Where you don’t expect to find a nutritionist is in a rural high school athletic department, but Ross High School is defying expectations.
The Rams have Laura Stitt, a dietary intern and graduate student from nearby Miami University, helping the training staff. Stitt has been supporting the athletic department since summer workouts by promoting healthy eating habits for the student-athletes.
Seeds were planted for Stitt’s involvement in a March 2019 sports medicine combine that Ross athletic trainer Kari Curry held for athletes and parents.
“Nutrition was part of it, and we looked first to do a general nutrition presentation to give the athletes more knowledge and more information,” Curry said. “And develop from there.”
Continuing to defy expectations, the Ross community wanted to know more.
“We had the initial meeting with everyone and all the kids were so great and expressed interest when they came up and talked to me,” Stitt said. “We took their BMI and their body fat percentage, and they were coming up to us asking us what do these numbers mean? What can I do?
“They were so interested and I said, ‘I’ll come back and keep teaching everyone about it,'” Stitt added. “Everyone was receptive, parents were coming up to me, I had coaches coming up to me. So it was kind of hard not to come back.”
Breakfast has colloquially been coined as the most important meal of the day for decades, but it is still vastly ignored. It was one of the first and most important changes Stitt made.
“I have tried to encourage breakfast,” Stitt said. “They start school so early, so no one ever eats breakfast. Eat breakfast. That’s my main takeaway. Try to eat breakfast. Try to eat a snack and drink a lot of water.”
“I have a lot of friends that don’t eat breakfast,” said Ali Moore, a senior cross country runner at Ross. “I always eat breakfast, she has just helped me figure out what is more healthy.”
It is premature to find conclusive evidence on Stitt’s impact in such a small sample size, but there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that her changes are making an impact.
Curry has noticed those changes through the declining amount of athlete visits to the training room.
“A decrease in musculo-skeletal injuries, things like strains, aches and pains.” Curry said. “Cramps have decreased, we’ve had a really small amount of them.”
Cramping is something that occurs in the early part of the fall athletic season and not just on Friday nights. Players are going down with cramps on Saturday afternoons as well and some of those college teams have nutritionists on staff.
“It’s not an hour before the game I had a bottle of water kind of thing,” Stitt said. ”It’s a Monday through Friday thing. You have to make sure you’re keeping track of it,”
Junior Quinton Rickett is a key cog in the 10-0 Southwest Ohio Conference first place men’s soccer team. Though as the season began, he experienced cramps on a regular basis and was referred to as Stitt’s cramp guy.
He met with Stitt to see what they could do to improve.
“She went over how to prepare before games and how much water I should be drinking,” Rickett said. “My calves would cramp up, and I couldn’t walk after a game or the next day. We went over what I needed to do to prepare and since I started following her steps it has only happened only once.”
“She told us about when she was running cross country in high school, and she was dehydrated and it affected her workout,” Moore noted. “I know a lot of us hydrate, but we don’t drink Gatorade as much as we should after a workout.”
Ross football coach Kenyon Commins is thrilled with the early returns of having an advocate for healthy eating and diets has had for his team. Commins before his team
“I think it’s been huge in all honesty.” Commins said just before the Rams were set to embark on a 56-mile trip to Western Brown last week. “She gives a lot of credence to what we say. It’s one thing for your coach to tell you to hydrate. It’s another thing to have a person who’s an expert and working towards being an expert in that field tell you and then give you the why. I think kids these days want to know why.
“I’m going to knock on wood and probably jinx it, but we have yet an issue with cramping whether it be jayvee on Saturday mornings or Friday nights we honest to goodness have not had a problem with cramping,” Commins added. “Now that I say that I’ll probably lose half my offensive line tonight.”
The Rams went on to beat Western Brown 34-7 in temperatures that reached 95 degrees, moving them to their best start in 24 years at 3-0.
Curry reported no issues with cramping.
Follow this reporter on Twitter @JacobBCHSS.