By Will Vandervort.

By Will Vandervort

When she was growing up, Lisa Chan loved to play sports. She was into gymnastics when she was little and by the time she started high school she was a member of the cross country team, the track team and was a cheerleader.

Her passion for sports ultimately led her to weightlifting where she discovered her real passion – nutrition.

“I really got into a lot of weightlifting on the side so eventually I became a personnel trainer and that’s kind of where I first started learning about nutrition,” Chan said.

Chan has now channeled her passion to Clemson University where she is the athletic department’s first full-time nutritionist. The University of Texas graduate was hired at Clemson back in October and she has hit the ground running ever since.

“Nutrition plays a role in strength and conditioning,” she said. “It goes hand-in-hand with that in terms of what we are trying to accomplish in the weight room. It plays a role in making an athlete stronger, gaining weight and losing weight. It also helps with injury prevention or recovery and those kinds of things.”

Chan, who will be building a support staff, is the lead nutritionist at Clemson and will work under Associate Athletic Director Dr. Loreto Jackson as part of the Student-Athlete Performance Team. Chan will work closely with Dr. Jackson, athletic trainers, strength and conditioning coaches and position coaches.

Her role will not only provide performance nutrition to student athletes, but also nutrition for health reasons such as Crohn’s disease, allergies, weight loss, weight gain and those kind of things. Chan will also have an influence on the pregame meals, eating on the road, setting up individual meal plans, host cooking classes, go out on grocery tours, educate coaches and help student-athletes in other sports besides football as well.

“She will do whatever is needed to support nutrition education, and get these guys to live a healthy lifestyle as much as they can in college,” Dr. Jackson said.

It should be easy for Chan, who came to Clemson from Auburn, to get student athletes on board with what she is doing. Her passion for her job shines through. It is something that first began to sparkle when she was in high school.

“No one was really around to teach us about it when I was growing up,” she said. “I even asked my principal in high school if we could get a nutrition class just as an elective. We did not have anything. There was no health science class or any of that kind of stuff.

“I really did not get into it, except on my own, until I got to college. It was always kind of there, but I just did not know I could make a career out of it until I got to college… I always thought about nutrition because when I was working out I always thought that was pretty cool.”

Chan received her Bachelors of Science degree in nutrition from the University of Texas and a Master’s degree in dietetics from the University of Florida. She is a registered dietitian and a certified strength and conditioning specialist.

With the new dining hall that just opened up in the WestZone this fall, things are coming together for Clemson to have a training table situation in place should the NCAA change its rule and allow schools to host three meals a day for its players. Right now, when classes are in session, schools can only provide a meal once a day.

Clemson President James Barker is leading the way to change these restrictions, and new rules could be in place by 2014.

With the dining hall, and with Chan there to make sure the student-athletes are getting the proper nutrition their bodies need to compete at the highest level, Clemson is on the cutting edge of sports performance.

“Nutrition goes with athletic training and overall health and well-being,” Chan said. “They go through a lot of things with practice, lifting and then having to go to class and the study hall. There is a lot of pressure on student-athletes and we take a lot out of them.

“What I’m trying to do is put that energy back into their body in a good way and make sure they are not eating bad food all the time.”

In other words, for Clemson to be a champion, its athletes have to start eating like champions first.

“That’s a big part of it,” Clemson head football coach Dabo Swinney said. “Sleep to win. Eat to win. Train to win. We want to develop a complete program, so that when student-athletes come here, they get a tremendous education and develop in every area of their life, and have an opportunity to be the best that they can be.”