MORGANTOWN — If the Florida Gators have Gatorade, well, the West Virginia Mountaineers have Mountain Water.
“On the sideline we have something we call ‘Mountain Water,’” said Haley Bishop, WVU’s Director of Sports Nutrition. “It’s a hydration supplement that we made up.”
Gatorade famously originated as a way to help the University of Florida football team recover during games. The Gators credited the drink as contributing to their 1967 Organe Bowl championship, after which the product exploded into the consumer market, where it is still a major player today.
That kind of behind-the-scenes innovation happens every year with football teams all over the country, whether it’s how players work out, how they recover or, like at Florida, what players are putting into their bodies.
“I call it just really strong Gatorade,” Bishop explained. “It’s extra carbs, extra electrolytes and it tastes like a salty lemonade.”
Bishop, who is entering her fourth season with the Mountaineers, said Mountain Water is one of many new nutrition ideas she and her assistant, WVU Sports Dietitian Bailey Kassner, have introduced to the WVU football program.
“The nutrition piece here has been a process, but…I think that’s in a great spot,” WVU head coach Neal Brown said earlier this month. “Our body fat percentages are the best they’ve ever been.”
Bishop and Kassner run the WVU nutrition program which includes, in Bishop’s words, “anything that has to do with food.” They create daily menus for all of the football team’s meals as well as snacks and supplements. They also monitor hydration and Vitamin D levels during practices and games.
College football teams can have as many as 105 players on the roster and football has as many different body types as basically any sport. So Bishop and Kassner can’t take a one-size-fits al approach to feeding the Mountaineers. 332-pound offensive lineman Ja’Quay Hubbard and 175-pound cornerback Ayden Garnes are obviously going to have different nutritional needs.
“You have four categories,” Bishop explained. “We have lean guys, we have maintain guys and then we have recomp and gain.”
Lean is players that need to lose weight, maintain is players who need to stay where they are, recomp is players who need to stay at the same weight but change their body fat and gain is players who need to put on weight.
Garnes, a transfer from Duquesne this offseason, is in the gain group, having put on 17 pounds since he got to Morgantown at the beginning of the year.
“Nutrition-wise, it was a whole different scenery when I got here,” Garnes said. “My first week I think I put on four pounds. It was a whole different ballgame here.”
Another player in the gain group is starting quarterback Garrett Greene, who got to WVU at 170 pounds and is now listed at 201.
“They’ve really done a great job with me and my development,” Greene said. “I came here at 170 (pounds) Haley’s been with me for four years and Bailey’s been here for two and they’re great communicators.”
It’s those two factors, longevity and communication, that Brown thinks have made the biggest difference for the Mountaineers’ nutrition program.
“It started with getting stability in that role and then adding to the staff,” Brown said. “What Haley has done is really build that program so we’ve got people that have been in our program for two and three years that have really developed expertise.”
Feeding players well at team meals is one thing, but if they go home and pig out on junk, it could ruin all the work done inside the team facility.
That’s where Bishop’s longevity plays in. Because she’s been with the players for several years now, she’s been able to educate them on how to eat well on their own.
“I think they’re really bought in and this is my fourth season with them,” Bishop said. “Being able to build that relationship with a ton of them, we are able to work with them.”
“It’s not perfect,” Brown admitted. “There’s not a nutrition program across the country that’s perfect, but our guys understand the ‘why.’ I think we’re doing a better job, program-wide, of explaining the ‘why.’ The players you’re coaching today are much more informed than in 2015 when I started coaching. They’re more informed and so the more you can hit why we’re doing this and why it’s important, they understand.”
Players also buy in because Bishop and Kassner take the time to individualize plans based not only on nutritional value but also on what players like or dislike.
“Every single human being is individualized, no one is the same,” Bishop said. “I think it’s really getting to know what their goals are and being able to reach them. If their goal is the NFL and they’re looking to go to the combine next year, we’re going to make some sacrifices. If they’re just a new freshman and they’re working on body comp but it’s not pressing, you can introduce it slowly.”
Bishop also isn’t just shoveling the team kale salads and spinach smoothies.
“Something I believe in is build-in fun,” Bishop said. “Having morale boosters so it’s not so serious all the time. We had a silent disco and we had pizza and wings. We had healthy options, but that was their fun activity. Having fun in nutrition and making sure they experience that is really important because food is so social and so personal.”
“They know what you like to eat to where you don’t have to eat just spinach,” Greene said. “We’re not all Popeye.”
Bishop and Kassner’s responsibilities don’t end at kickoff. They travel with the team and are very careful about what players eat on Friday night and before the game on Saturday. Then, they’re on the sideline, like they will be against Penn State on Saturday (noon, FOX) making sure players are properly hydrated and taken care of, whether that’s with a bottle of Mountain Water or a pack of fruit snacks.
