SE: Summer Cooking Classes Give K-State Student-Athletes Healthy Options, Skills to Make Them at Home
Jul 11, 2018 | Sports Extra, Athletics, Evans Student-Athlete Success Program
By Corbin McGuire
Katie LeMair started out by asking Austin Trice a simple question.
"Do you know how to cook anything?" asked LeMair, K-State's assistant sports dietician/nutritionist.
Trice, an incoming junior for K-State men's basketball, responded with one word: "Cereal."
While he was joking, Trice was about to expand his cooking repertoire in a hurry.
Trice and his teammate, Pierson McAtee, helped each other whip up a healthy version of sweet and sour chicken. They also learned how to make a sushi roll from chef Jawad Soto and, despite some initial hesitation, tried out some cauliflower rice they prepared.
"I didn't think I would like it," Trice said of the cauliflower rice, "but it's great."
Like a few dozen other Wildcat student-athletes, the 6-foot-7 forward took part in a cooking session offered at K-State's performance table this summer. The K-State Athletics' nutrition department offered more than a handful of these educational, hands-on sessions between the spring and fall semester.
Other classes made breakfast basics, including French toast, omelets and berry smoothie bowls, while another created a variety of sweet treats and healthy snacks, such as trail mix, yogurt bark and energy bites.
"I think it's amazing," Trice said of his cooking class, which lasted about an hour. "I've never done anything like this before and it was an awesome experience, something I'll definitely remember."
K-State volleyball sophomore Brynn Carlson, a dietetics major, came in on the other side of the spectrum as Trice.
Still, she walked away from the classes like he did, grateful.
"I think it's a really good resource for athletes, especially in the summer when we don't have performance table for breakfast and dinner all the time. The hours are more limited. We have to cook for ourselves more, so I think it's a really great way to learn how to make some simple meals that are also really healthy," she said. "It just allows people to eat healthier and avoid eating out. I've been trying to do a better job this summer of cooking more for myself and making my own meals. It's definitely cool to get some recipes from them, and also just learn how to make things that I wouldn't normally learn how to make, like sushi. That was a cool thing to learn."
Performance table manager Kylie Hanson, who works closely with K-State Athletics' nutrition staff, helped reboot the summer classes after hearing countless requests for them.
"It's kind of cool to see them go outside of their shell a little bit, do things that they didn't think they could do," she said, "and just enjoy something out of the daily lifting, running, practicing, the daily routine that they go through. It's something different."
"I've really enjoyed watching our student-athletes come into classes hesitant about cooking or unsure of their skills and then seeing them leave with new confidence in how to cook meals on their own," added LeMair. "At the end of these classes my biggest hope is that our athletes walk away with skills they can use for the rest of their life."
The benefits of the classes, Hanson said, are wide reaching.
For those student-athletes with more experience in the kitchen, Hanson said it's a way to give them "new ideas" to try. For the other side, she said the goal is to teach some of the basics.
"How to cut a vegetable, how to cut a fruit, how to cut up meat, but also proper temperatures with cooking, especially with chicken, and showing them how to use a thermometer if they have one," Hanson said, listing a few examples. "Just the essentials of cooking."
Normally student-athletes come to the performance table to pick from a variety of healthy meals already prepared for them by a team of chefs. The summer classes give them some insight into how much work goes into each meal.
"I love PT. I think the food there is great, so it's cool to get a sneak peek into how everything works in the back and get more interaction with the chefs because we don't really get to know them or meet them at all; they're usually just in the kitchen, cooking the whole time. We kind of bonded a little bit with the chef who was doing sushi," Carlson said. "It was nice to meet them and kind of put a face to all the people who are preparing our food all the time."
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