Setting The Pandemic Modified Feeding Bar

Nebraska's Performance Nutrition Team was a national leader during the pandemic. For a look back at how the Huskers modified their performance nutrition program during the pandemic, read below. 

    

Dave Ellis went on air to discuss the pandemic modified feeding operation with Mike'l Severe and Damon Benning. The first interview was on day 72 of the pandemic modified ops, and the second interview was on day 400. 

Classes Suspended on March 26, 2020
When the University of Nebraska Lincoln suspended classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic on March 16th, 2020 safe fueling contingencies for the student-athletes had to be conceived literally overnight. Mitigating COVID-19 transmission hazards with preventive controls was fluid when it came to evolving best practices, but while most athletic departments shut down all feeding operations, Nebraska Athletics simply adapted to ensure the welfare of the student-athletes sheltered in place was not compromised.  As athletic departments, Olympic NGB's and professional teams began to reopen during the summer of 2020, the various levels of modified pandemic feeding ops evolved at UNL athletics were opened for examination and adaptation to help ensure the welfare of athletes across the globe.  For example:
 
v1.0: Restrictive Ops During Shelter-In-Place Orders: 


 
This was a curbside, seven-day-per-week meal pick-up service where the student-athletes RSVP with a text-based system, 24 hours in advance to pick up all the portion-controlled food and beverages they needed for a single day.  Key learnings right away were the labor and food packaging costs were substantial and supply chain disruptions were very fluid. Weekend meal money for use at local restaurants was suspended during this period so the student-athletes were not forced compromise shelter in place orders to get food. Quarantine meal services where all the food a student-athlete needed for the day were also started in coordination with our Medical Team handling the symptomatic cases during this period with delivery being coordinated by coaching staff members in a non-contact manner. After 53 days of non-stop service to our student-athletes sheltered in place we made an overnight pivot to v2.0.
 
 
v2.0: Post Shelter In Place Ops:


 
Big Red Open-Air Market where the student-athletes had the ability to self-select a variety of portioned-controlled containers of food in a physically-distanced, open-air space (our media bays).  These media bays greatly exceeded the servery space in our training table and the open-air environment and sunshine were spot-on when it came to transmission preventive controls. Like v1.0, all the meals they needed for a day were picked up at one time. Supply chain disruption continued to grow which included PPE for essential personnel. We operated out of this open-air setting for 65 consecutive days for a total of 118 days of 7 days-per-week service for our student-athletes sheltering in Lincoln Nebraska.  To put this into perspective, at this point, most collegiate and pro settings were just contemplating reopening plans.
 
 
v3.0: Return To-Play Bubble Ops:


 
Fall sports that needed to maintain a "bubble" with anticipation of competing in the fall with very restrictive safety measures necessitated yet another evolution to multiple feeding operations where the teams could sit and dine between breaks in their schedules and consume multiple means onsite in a day as opposed to coming in one time per day to get all of their food. Unmasking and dining in a physically-distanced manner required teams to bubble into segmented locations which was very demanding on our Performance Nutrition Team to execute, as the logistics of doing so put a strain on all our resources.  Multiple team bubble ops ended after 21 days when our conference postponed all fall sport seasons at which point, we transitioned back to vs. 2.0 in the Media Bay overnight!  After one week of v2.0, all feeding was suspended for cost containment purposes, culinary staff were furloughed and fueling station ops were reopened to accommodate teams that were in-processing to train on property.
 
 
v4.0 Combo Ops:
After all feeding was suspended for three weeks, the abrupt return to play for our fall sports by our conference created a very unique phase of modified pandemic feeding ops with multiple combinations of service occurring at one time, all designed to keep sports from crossing paths while in our athletic facilities that were not designed to create "bubbles".  For example:  Sports that wre in-season were operating in v3.0 bubbles and sports that were approaching their competitive seasons were being fed in a v2.0 open-air market.  Sports that were spring sports were being fueled at various “enhanced" fueling stations adjacent to our weight rooms incidental to their workouts.  All our student-athletes received money to use at local restaurants on the weekends.  Transitions between these various levels of pandemic modified feeding ops continued into the spring.  This was by far the most challenging phase of our pandemic modified feeding ops. Our human resources were stretched thin with a smaller pool of personnel who were allowed to work around our student-athletes in these secured bubbles.  This was a real test of our collective mettle for all of our Performance Nutrition team members still engaged and I couldn't have been prouder of them all. I was especially proud of our student-athletes who cooked in their apartments!  Our efforts to teach our student-athletes how to cook the previous two years at our Life Skill Kitchen paid big dividends during this pandemic and our Sports RDs were fully engaged on sharing shopping tips and easy-to-make recipes for same home meals solutions. 

GBR!