Contact: Nicholas Osterloo, Assistant Sports Information Director, 630-637-5324

Aug. 7, 2023 - The North Central College athletics department has announced a partnership with ZoneIn, a nutrition platform that can be customized to each student-athlete's needs, before the 2023–2024 school year.

ZoneIn is an app that all Cardinal student-athletes have access to. It provides athletes with meal suggestions based on their macronutrient needs, personalized hydration targets, and checklists to help each student-athlete stay on track by logging each of their meals. ZoneIn also provides links to dining services on campus for easy meal selection to best suit each athlete's nutritional needs and macro breakdown.

This nutrition initiative for North Central was led by the Cardinal athletic training staff.

"When I was first approached by ZoneIn, I was excited to implement this nutrition app for our athletes," said Tracy Stephen, associate athletic trainer. "Jim Miller (senior director of athletics) and his staff championed this initiative and found a way to provide for our student-athletes and coaches. ZoneIn provides valuable insight and knowledge for our student-athletes on how nutrition can assist them in achieving their performance goals. Nutrition plays a huge role in injury prevention, athletic performance, and overall health, and ZoneIn allows them the ability to see it in real-time."

ZoneIn also allows the coaches to have a dashboard for their team to analyze the nutrition habits of the team while also planning pre- and post-competition meals to allow for the optimal nutritional outcome for each athlete. Coaches also can gain valuable feedback through ZoneIn's ability to send push notifications of custom surveys. This allows student-athletes to keep their coaches and athletic trainers informed on how their bodies are feeling and compare their nutrition intake and hydration levels.

"ZoneIn will be beneficial for student-athletes at North Central as we will be able to manage our nutrition under the guidance of our coaches and athletic training staff. While many athletes individually pay attention to their nutritional intake to maximize their performance, it is important that we include our coaches and support staff in that process to ensure that we are achieving our goals in safe and healthy ways. The app can be used to start (and continue) conversations surrounding nutrition between coaches and athletes that may have never been explored before, and I see this potential for conversation as an exceptional benefit to welcoming ZoneIn to our campus," said Hailey Poe, women's triathlon/track & field junior and vice president of the Student Athlete Advisory Council.

Every student-athlete will gain access to ZoneIn and learn the best practices for using it in their preseason meetings with their assigned athletic trainer.

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