Graphic by Elaine Zhang / The Choate News
Choate student-athletes will now have the option to eat special pregame and postgame meals at the dining hall. This new food option will be available at the cultural food station for lunch and dinner on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The station will include food that is beneficial to eat before competing in a game or match, and will also feature recovery food to eat after a game at dinner. Athletics Director Mr. Roney Eford explained, “Basically every Wednesday and Saturday for lunch and dinner, the dining hall will have additional food that tends to help before and after competition.”
SAGE Dining Services will provide the food based off a program that they have established at other high schools. The program, called Performance Spotlight, focuses on providing student-athletes with proper nutrition for athletic competition. The SAGE website states, “The program, which draws upon guidelines laid out by the United States Olympic Committee, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and other major sports nutrition associations, provides educational material to guide student-athletes’ food choices at lunch, offers team meals and snacks, and incorporates house-made, clean label sports drinks and bars.”
In creating the station at Choate, SAGE and the athletic office have collaborated to improve nutrition for student-athletes. Mr. Eford said, “The dining staff has been terrific. They have been really awesome in terms of just trying to get a competitive edge for all of our student-athletes from the thirds, JV, and varsity, and I think they understand how important food is to accommodate us for games.”
Since SAGE already started the program at other schools, it should be easy to implement at Choate. The program comes with certain recipes and other snacks that are beneficial to eat before and after competitions. For example, a recipe that SAGE will likely feature before a game could include barbecue chicken breasts, barbecue tofu, potato salad with vinegar dressing, steamed brown rice, seasoned vegetables, sliced strawberries, and watermelon wedges.
In addition to the pre-game meals served during Wednesday and Saturday lunch, the performance foods station will likely feature small snacks such as pretzels, trail mix, granola bars, and fig bars that will be easy for student-athletes to take on the go. Hilal Zoberi ’20 said of the food at the station, “Nuts, protein bars, and maybe some granola that would not upset your stomach would be great to have at the dining hall on game days.”
The athletic foods station will be available not only to student-athletes but to anyone in the Choate community for lunch and dinner on Wednesdays and Saturdays. On this topic, Mr. Eford expressed, “Some schools will actually only have this only for one team or five teams called a training table. But we want to give an equitable and uniform experience for everyone.”
A long-term goal of the performance spotlight program is nutritional education. Having an idea of the right types of foods to eat before and after athletics helps performance during the competition and recovery afterwards. On the topic of nutritional education, Mr. Eford said, “I think the next step is really having student-athletes understand how important nutrition is in the process. Just getting to understand that having soda before you go play a game is probably not the best thing for your body because you want your body to respond to all the hard work you’ve done.”
Providing healthy and unprocessed food at the station will be important for student-athletes. Girls’ and Boys’ Varsity Water Polo coach Ms. Brooke Fichera said, “Having the right balance of protein, carbs, and fat is really important. Also, having a mix of carbs that are just not empty carbs but are like sweet potatoes and things that have energy in them.”
Most Choate student-athletes and coaches have responded positively to the addition to the dining hall. Chris Guyette ’19 said of the station, “The addition of the pre-game food station is something I have been pushing for over the last four years. As an athlete at Choate, I am always in search of the least processed, most nutritionally sufficient foods in the dining hall every day.” He continued, “Thus, although I wish this station could be in place every single day because proper nutrition is an everyday necessity, I am excited for its use on game days – when the types of food consumed throughout the day means the most to athletes.”
Further down the road, the program could be expanded to include the meals that teams bring to away games. Teams could have a larger variety of choices than just a basic sandwich to eat before a competition. On the topic of the pre-packed meals, Derek Son ’20 said, “It would be nice if SAGE could provide other food options for away games instead of the same sandwiches every week. Also, more small snacks that I could take and eat during a game would be good.”
Overall, the new pregame and postgame food station aims to improve Choate student-athletes’ performances on the field, rink, court, or pool. Be on the lookout for athletic performance foods at the cultural food station during lunch and dinner on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
