NCAA rule change means more food for Stanford athletes

The Stanford Athletic Program is offering a new snack stand and breakfast option this year to provide better fueling choices for its athletes in response to a recent NCAA rule change. The regulation switch now allows all division I institutions to feed their athletes unlimited meals per day.

One of these previous rules includes not allowing institutions to provide cream cheese with the bagels they provide their athletes. Stanford has taken advantage of this rule change by introducing the Farm Stand, which provides nutritious snacks in between workouts and meals as well as an elevated breakfast program for nine out of the thirty-six Division I sports in the Stanford Athletic program.

Softball player Bessie Noll gets her pre-practice snack at the Farm Stand.

Senior Associate Athletic Director, Earl Koberlein, said the decision to implement new food programs this year was a financial decision for the athletic program as well as an attempt to provide athletes with the proper whole food nutrients to fuel their bodies on a daily basis and compete with other top athletic programs around the country.

“In the past, only student-athletes on scholarship could receive extra meals. Now we can provide unlimited meals to all varsity student-athletes.  Budget wise we made the decision to provide it to the nine programs that are participating.  We decided to provide breakfast as the meal because experts determined it is better to get student-athletes up and out of bed and have them take in a nutritious meal to fuel their bodies for the day,” Koberlein said.

The new breakfast program is provided weekdays and mandatory for athletes in nine Stanford sports programs — football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, women’s tennis, women’s gymnastics, women’s volleyball, women’s sand volleyball, women’s soccer, and softball. These teams were chosen based on team budgeting, Title IX regulations, and assessing a team’s need of a positive food culture.

Junior softball player, Bessie Noll, says the mandatory breakfast leads to a more productive day. “I never used to eat breakfast so it forces me to get up and start the day off right. It also forces me to get into a better sleeping routine and develop healthy habits which is good.”

This special breakfast meal requires the Stanford Athletic program to pay additional money to provide athletes with food items not traditionally available in dining halls, such as berries and whole food grab-and-go options.

The program is something the athletic program would like to expand to all thirty-six teams but as of right now that expansion is not a financial commitment the program is willing to make. Although the exact cost was not revealed,Kristen Gravani, Director of nutrition,  said the athletic department pays about twice as much per student athlete meal through the breakfast program than a regular meal plan costs through Stanford Residential and Dining Experience.

Stanford “wants us to continue to add teams. Its not like next year we will add all thirty-six teams because that would be a large financial commitment and we would need a new facility, the current one isn’t big enough. But adding teams next year is definitely the goal,” Gravani said.

Separate from the breakfast program, Farm Stand is available to all 900-varsity athletes at Stanford. Prior to 2014 there were no snacks provided to athletes in any capacity.

Stanford Sports Performance Coach, Steve DiLustro, said athletes should never now feel hungry. “In an ideal world we would want our athletes to eat every four hours or so and this gives them a chance to do that with no money out of their pockets,” he said.

Sophomore men’s volleyball player, Kyle Dagostino, a frequent user of the Farm Stand said, “it adds an extra meal/snack to my day when I could really use it.”

Although Stanford is not currently catering all of the athletes’ meals and only has one sports nutritionist for all thirty-six teams, Gravani is happy with the progress of the sports nutrition program this past year.

She said: “We are not trying to hide the fact that we are a little behind, but in terms of our one year old sports nutrition program we have grown exponentially,”

Chef Raphael makes omelets at the custom omelet station at Stanford’s breakfast incidental meal