BANC dedication highlights Baylor Athletics’ dedication to nutrition

Imagine for a moment you are a 280-pound defensive end — powerful, explosive, and working to stay that way. Then imagine you’re a volleyball player — less than half the size of that defensive end, yet still powerful and explosive and looking to stay fueled to play your best. You’ve worked hard in class all morning and practiced all afternoon. Now it’s time to eat. Even though you know what’s healthy and what isn’t, you could always use a little guidance in what foods specifically help you be your best.

The diets of defensive linemen, volleyball players, track athletes, pitchers and catchers may all be very different, but as a Baylor student-athlete, you know where to go to get food selected with you in mind: you go to the BANC. With this August’s opening of the Beauchamp Athletics Nutrition Center (BANC), Baylor student-athletes find food and meal plans designed to fuel them to be their best in one central location.

The BANC is being dedicated today, the latest symbol of Baylor’s commitment to athletic excellence. The center houses a 160-seat dining hall and study lounge specifically for Baylor student-athletes, all made possible by the generosity of Baylor Regent Bob Beauchamp and his wife, Laura. As part of the Highers Athletics Complex, where Baylor Bears lift weights, study, train and more, it’s convenient not only for the student-athletes, but for the people who care about what they eat.

“I’m pretty much living the dream right now, having the ability to feed the athletes the way we want to. It’s amazing,” says Jana Heitmeyer, Baylor’s Director of Performance Nutrition. “It allows me to talk the same language as them. I know what foods they’re getting now, I know what they’re going to be getting, so I can talk to them a little bit about what foods to choose and which ones to avoid.”

[SEE inside the BANC in this Baylor Athletics video]

Heitmeyer’s background is in sport nutrition. Many professors in Baylor’s Department of Health, Human Performance and Recreation are experts in sports nutrition as well, and departmental labs like the Exercise Biochemical Nutrition Laboratory provide places to study the impact of various substances on athlete nutrition — research that benefits athletes here at Baylor and beyond.

Thanks to that research and the work done by Heitmeyer and her colleagues, that defensive end now knows where he can find those 4,000 calories he needs in a day, and how best to consume them. (A dinner plan, believe it or not, could include beef tacos covered with cheese, which may not sound healthy, but because of the research behind the plan, can be enjoyed guilt-free.) Meanwhile, the volleyball player can found out how best to eat her recommended 2,500 calories in a day, in a manner designed to help her perform her best in practice and in games, and keep her focus amidst the demands of a being a student and an athlete.

Will the BANC lead directly to more Big 12 titles? It may be impossible to say, but it’s obvious that the facility and the research behind it make Baylor a more desirable place for a prospective student-athlete, and an even better place for one already here. And when they take the field, they’ll have been fueled for victory long before gametime.

Sic ’em, BANC and Baylor sport nutrition experts!