Ryan Dunleavy

Staff writer

PISCATAWAY - At 6-foot-6, 314 pounds and in the best shape of his life, it takes a lot to intimidate Tariq Cole.

Allison Kreimeier needed just 10 words and a “silly look” to do the trick after the Rutgers football left tackle sat down next to her with a muffin from the new 24-hour snack stand in the Hale Center.

“She looked at it and said, ‘Oh wow, that’s a lot of sugar on a muffin,’” Cole said, laughing at the memory of feeling dejected. “I was like, Oh? OK.’ I put it back and got an apple. She monitors my plates and everything I need to eat. Having her around is great.”

Kreimeier was hired in March as the inaugural director of performance nutrition for Rutgers athletics. First-year football coach Chris Ash recommended the creation of such a position, interviewed candidates and had Kreimeier in place by the start of spring camp.

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It is Kreimeier’s responsibility to ensure that Rutgers athletes understand the do’s and don’ts of eating right and staying hydrated. To make it happen, she surrounds them with healthy choices.

“We’re starting from scratch and identifying what’s priority to build this program,” she said. “Recovery and keeping them well-fueled throughout the day are a priority right now.”

Ash came to Rutgers from Ohio State, where athlete nutrition is so strongly emphasized that football coach Urban Meyer counts it as a reason for winning the national championship in 2015.

Kreimeier came from Houston, where coach Tom Herman – Ash’s close friend and former colleague at Ohio State – had a one-year head start installing Meyer’s year-round multi-layered system for development.

Rutgers football players are required to have a water bottle on them at all times.

“There is so much that we’re putting into sports science and nutrition,” Ash told Gannett New Jersey. “We’re trying to promote the right type of lifestyle that helps you maximize performance.”

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Plenty of Power Five schools still don’t employ an athletics nutritionist, but the new Rutgers brass believed in Ash's vision.

“If we are going to do what are the best practices in college athletics right now, it can’t just be focused on skills development,” athletics director Pat Hobbs said.

"Look at what Coach Ash has done with hydration and bringing that science to what we do. Having someone who can do that across all sports will improve everyone and create great habits for life for all these kids. That's what we should be about as an educational institution."

Kreimeier is positioned as a liaison between strength and conditioning and sports medicine. Rutgers added two more full-timers to the department earlier this month.

“Many, many years ago strength and conditioning wasn’t a component of sports,” Kreimeier said. “Nutrition is the last piece of puzzle. People are seeing how important it is, and how much further these athletes can take their performance and their skills by being well-fueled.”

Start small, think big

Kreimeier started small by surveying football players about cramping, food and local restaurant preferences, supplement usage, sleep habits and urination frequency to gauge hydration level.

Soon enough, the former clinical dietician at an Arkansas hospital – and self-proclaimed fan of SkinnyPop and Greek yogurt – was dissecting fast food menus to identify healthy choices.

“I know that there are meals that they have to get on their own,” Kreimeier said, “and more than 50 percent of the time they are not going to be homemade meals.

“I put together a brochure that they can stick in their backpack – it’s laminated and pocket size – listing all the restaurants nearby and good choices at each. Meeting them where they are is the most important thing. You can’t prevent (unhealthy eating), but we can educate them, for sure.”

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Eventually, the program will reach a new level as Kreimeier borrows some ideas from Houston.

“We did grocery store tours,” she said. “I showed them how to shop. Maybe it’s as simple as how to save money by chopping up your own vegetables, how to read the label with the price per unit so you know you are getting the best deal, or how to tell when an avocado is ripe.”

Buying food is only half the battle.

“We would like try to do cooking demonstrations,” she said. “We just have to have the resources available – like a stove. We can definitely show how to make a healthy, quick meal in the microwave and on portable stove tops.”

The end result should look like this, according to Kreimeier: A college athlete should eat five or six times per day – including snacks between breakfast and lunch, lunch and dinner, and dinner and bedtime – and hydrate early and often, with 1-2 cups every hour starting when the alarm sounds.

“I’m definitely part of the team,” said Kreimeier, who will travel with football in the fall. “I’m there at every meal. Every day of the week that they are here, I’m here.”

Though headquartered in a small Hale Center office piled high with bulk-size boxes of snacks, Kreimeier wasn’t difficult to find during spring football camp. Especially for players – some of whom already developed a habit of stopping by on their way up to morning meetings.

Kreimeier roamed the practice sidelines with snack bags of chewy bars and fluids like Gatorade or a Pedialyte mixture on hand. Protein shakes are available afterward to recover from practice or a lift.

“She’s made a great difference,” defensive end Julian Pinnix-Odrick said. “She is already in my ear all practice. I’m coming up the stairs and she is into it: Are you a weight gainer? Are you somebody who needs to lose weight? Do you lose a lot of fluids? Do this. Take this.”

Evaluate the plate

In April 2014, the NCAA scrapped the rule capping schools at providing three meals per day or a food stipend to student-athletes – limited to those on scholarship – and replaced it with unlimited access to food and snacks for the entire department population.

“They have a different strategy that they need to go about with their nutritional needs,” Kreimeier said. “They don’t have a typical adult diet.

“Coaches say they are coming in more energized. Tutors say the snacks are great because they are able to pay better attention and are more awake during tutoring and classes.”

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Because every athlete’s diet is different, the variety on the new 24-hour snack stand can be a minefield of poor choices.

Who should reach for a muffin or a bagel? Who should reach for cereal and yogurt? How about bagged pretzels, string cheese and fruit?

That’s why Kreimeier devotes so much of her own energy to education. Like the meticulous Ash, she is a fan of binders – and her organized way of monitoring individual players at Houston stood out in the pool of candidates.

“She understands football’s needs,” Ash said. “She came in with all these notes and binders, and she didn’t need any of them. She could go through A-Z different types of plans based on an individual player’s needs.”

The school’s new sports nutrition Twitter account (@RUfueledup) posts nourishment tips and photos of healthy meals.

Kreimeier also promotes 8-10 hours of sleep per night – no easy task when balancing athletic and academic responsibilities – because that’s when “all the repairing happens” to the body.

“You are talking 18- to 22 year-old kids who are going to try to get food any way they can," Ash said. "The top 10 percent elite guys understand how to take care of themselves, but the majority of them don’t.

"Now that we can provide the majority of their meals right here in our complex and monitor what they put in their bodies, it’s a game-changer. When you hire somebody who is an expert in that field, it takes the next step.”

Some high schools around the nation are following the lead of colleges by emphasizing nutrition within their athletic departments, according to The New York Times.

No surprise then: It’s already a factor in recruiting.

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Kreimeier spoke at Junior Days and did 30-minute presentations on official visits at Houston, and expects to do the same at Rutgers.

“Speaking with the parents about any concerns that they have – letting them know that their child will be well taken care of and well fed – that’s important,” she said. “But the kids have a lot of questions, too. They are really intrigued.”

They can look at Cole as proof of change in action. He now makes healthy smoothies every day and divides his plate into one-half vegetables, one-quarter carbohydrates and one-quarter grilled chicken or something similarly substantial.

“She knows what’s going to give me energy at practice,” Cole said, “and you need as much energy as possible to play in our offense."

Staff Writer Ryan Dunleavy: rdunleavy@gannettnj.com

