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The University of Florida being an upper-tier football program hasn't happened by accident. Every bit as important as the coaching staff and the players is the support staff working behind the scenes who help to drive the effort.

Over the summer GatorBait.net has taken a look at those invaluable members of the team.

Up today is Director of Sports Nutrition Cheryl Zonkowski.

GatorBait.net: What is your background as far as how long have you been at the University of Florida and what have been your duties along the way?

Cheryl Zonkowski: I was a student at UF starting in 1999 and earned my Bachelor's Degree in Dietetics and Psychology (2003). I became the Sports Nutrition Intern for UF's University Athletic Association while working on my Master's Degree in Human Performance from 2003 through 2005.

As the nutrition intern I learned to communication with student-athletes, administration, athletic trainers, coaches, and strength and conditioning staff. The experience taught me how to help others learn and implement healthy nutrition practices to improve their performance. It also taught me how to make a variety of delicious smoothies that the student-athletes couldn't get enough of!

To become a registered dietitian I completed a dietetic internship at Winthrop University in South Carolina and was able to learn how the University of South Carolina's Athletic Association worked.

I was very lucky to be hired as the Director of Sports Nutrition for UF's UAA in 2006. My current position involves providing one-on-one nutritional counseling, analyzing body composition, presenting team nutrition education, evaluating & distributing NCAA permissible supplements, and designing pre-competition, post-competition, travel, & Training Table meals (where scholarship student-athletes eat dinner Monday through Thursday evenings) for student-athletes.

GatorBait.net: Florida has gone above and beyond in hiring a full time Sports Nutritionist. How many other programs have a full-time nutritionist on staff?

Cheryl Zonkowski: Currently there are fifteen Colleges and Universities, soon to be sixteen, which have full-time registered dietitians on their Athletic Association staff. There are also about one hundred schools that have registered dietitians that either work part-time or consult with their Athletic Associations.

Florida's Nutrition Department was originally started in 1999 by Michelle Rockwell, who was our first full-time dietitian.

Our department is the fourth eldest in the country. We are currently the only school with two full-time registered dietitians on staff!

Anna Grout MS, RD, LDN, our Coordinator of Sports Nutrition, and I share the 525 or so student-athletes here at Florida.

Having two nutrition staff members allows our student-athletes to receive high quality one-on-one care and follow-up and allows deeper relationships to be developed not only with the student-athletes, but the coaches and support staff involved with each team.

We are also able to provide more services, such as designing pre-competition, post-competition and travel menus and participate directly in the menu design and day to day operation of our Training Table.

We are very appreciative of the administrative support our department receives to fund our staffing and many services.

GatorBait.net: How exactly do you supplement what the coaches and strength and conditioning staff already contribute? What exactly are your day-to-day responsibilities?

Cheryl Zonkowski: As you can imagine, the responsibilities of coaches and strength and conditioning staff are enormous! They have all encompassing jobs, both on the field and off.

Not only are they responsible for student-athletes athletic careers, but they are also life coaches involved in the academic and personal success of their players.

Helping a student-athlete manage his health and fitness status can be quite demanding.

Fitness and performance are directly correlated and it's impossible to play your best without having optimal fitness.

In my experience, all staff members welcome help in dealing with nutrition related issues, especially with the speed and volume of new information in the field.

Having a full-time nutrition staff available to counsel, educate, and fuel takes at least a little stress and pressure off coaches. Knowing that there are qualified (and certified) professionals assisting student-athletes with fueling decisions can be just as comforting as knowing that the best athletic trainers, doctors, strength and conditioning staff, and surgeons are taking care of their health and fitness.

GatorBait.net: How hard is it to get the athletes to buy into what you are preaching?

Cheryl Zonkowski: Well, not all athletes are necessarily in need of huge changes to see benefits in performance. Developing a relationship with the student-athlete is always my #1 goal. Without confidence and trust I have no chance at teaching anyone a thing.

I always get to know the student-athlete, where they're from, what their family is like, what they like and dislike.

Once I know a little about them, I promote the healthy habits that they have related to eating.

We then set goals that the athlete is interested in achieving. If they are motivated, improvements are much more likely than if I suggest improving a practice that they don't want to or won't even consider changing.

GatorBait.net: You take it a step further in that you actually go shopping with the athletes as well as teach cooking classes.

Cheryl Zonkowski: Nutrition concepts are best when put into action, instead of only discussed. For example, we go to the grocery store and walk around and talk about how to shop, what to purchase, how to prepare it, how to be cost effective.

Grocery store tours allow the student-athletes to ask about foods and topics that are of interest to them, and they not only hear answers, but can see answers for themselves. An example is comparing product labels. This allows the student-athletes to learn how to make healthy choices when they are on their own.

We also have cooking classes.

The classes involve recipe prep, execution, serving, and eating. We will have about 3-4 student athletes per cooking station and about 4-5 stations each class. We will have 1-2 stove top options, an oven baked option, a microwave option, and a no cook option. At the end of the class everyone shares what they made and we all sit down and eat dinner together.

GatorBait.net: Showing them is one thing, how do you actually know they are following your direction?

Cheryl Zonkowski: Accountability is encouraged by everyone on the staff as well as amongst teammates.

I have seen student-athletes dining out and know that they do not always follow the "perfect diet" (mind you, I don't either), and I always discuss with them the timing of their splurges related to game days, big practices, and training sessions.

Moderation is key for everyone, not only student-athletes!

It's always a funny story when a roommate will tell me about some of a "high needs" student-athlete's intake over a weekend and we all laugh and joke. However, I usually ask the "high needs" athlete later how much of the story was true and what could be done differently in the future to help him with some healthier decision making.

Even if I don't see them or hear stories we monitor our student-athletes body compositions. This tells us about their fitness level and if they are really working at their intake as much as they claim that they are or if they are splurging a little too often.

GatorBait.net: How do you chart progress? It is simply having them step on the scales?

Cheryl Zonkowski: We measure their body compositions and fitness level by their strength and conditioning developments (this is specifically measured by the team's Strength and Conditioning Staff) and by their weight, lean body mass (muscle mass), and body fat (fat mass).

The Athletic Association has a Bod Pod, which is a machine that can take a snapshot of your body and tell you what your specific lean body mass is (LBM is made up of muscle, bone, skin, and organs) and fat mass (which is the amount of fat on your body).

This information is gathered at least twice a semester, if not more often, and as it changes we can tell if a student-athlete is gaining, losing, or maintaining muscle mass and/or gaining, losing or maintaining fat tissue.

This information is valuable because it tells us if student-athletes are responding to the physical and dietary training they undergo during the year.

The reason that they have goals is to help them perform to the best of their abilities and if the recommendations we make aren't working we have to alter the recommendations to something the student-athlete's body will respond to and so that they can see and feel performance benefits.

We also keep track of their health status by taking a look at their blood work 2-3 times a year. I look at values that describe their red blood cells and iron to determine if they are storing enough iron to assure that enough oxygen is available to their muscles when they exercise. The sports health staff also looks at other values to be sure that a student-athlete's circulatory system, immune system, and organs are healthy and functioning normally.

GatorBait.net: Generally speaking is it harder to put on or take off weight?

Cheryl Zonkowski: Examples of general goals can be weight loss or weight gain. Both can be very challenging for student-athletes. The challenging part is multifaceted. One challenge can be that a student-athlete's body is resistant to change, they may have been at a set weight and body composition for years, depending on their growth spurt and the training they participated in during high school.

Another challenge may be their dietary habits.

A weight gain challenge may be that they were only been eating 1-2 meals a day and to gain weight they have to eat 5-6 meals/snacks a day.

We then have to talk about remembering to pack snacks (food availability), paying attention to hunger cues, drinking calorie dense beverages, adding "sneaky" calories to meals and snacks (like peanut butter or cheese to fruits & vegetables).

A weight loss challenge may be that they are used to eating huge portions of food and never feel full or satisfied. To work on that issue we have to talk about differentiating between hunger and thirst, portion sizes, paying attention to hunger cues, comfort and boredom eating.

GatorBait.net: I think one of the more interesting aspects of the nutritional side is the Breakfast Club. Talk about that.

Cheryl Zonkowski: Ways that we discover where student-athletes are having a hard time meeting their goals (such as weight gain and/or weight loss) is at breakfast club.

Breakfast club is a set time in the morning when student-athletes are encouraged to come to the dining hall and eat breakfast with me.

We have little 2-3 minute educational session on hydration, ideal backpack snacks, healthy meals to-go, optimal restaurant eating, grocery shopping, supplement do's and don'ts, and a dozen or so more.

Again, it gives them some one-on-one time to ask questions and talk with me about what is and isn't working to help them reach their goals. We also get the chance to come up with new ideals if they are tired of the same snacks or have been using the same grocery list for 2 months.

They also help me stay on top of what the "hot topic" supplements are and the "latest and greatest" nutrition concepts are that they read about on the Internet or in magazines.

It gives student-athletes the chance to learn facts (backed by research) versus myths that may have no evidence or incorrect evidence. The breakfast club members are mainly freshmen and any other student-athlete who is really struggling to meet his nutritional and fitness goals.

GatorBait.net: You also have the weekly Thursday night family dinners. What are those like?

Cheryl Zonkowski: Thursday night dinners became a weekly fall event for the football team when Coach Meyer and his staff arrived. The concept behind it allows the players to get to know the coaching, strength and conditioning, and athletic training staff and their families on a personal level.

The families attend Thursday practices and come to a catered meal in the stadium afterward.

At the end of practice the football players will hang out with some of the younger kids and throw a ball around and play tag. Then everyone walks over to dinner and the players will sit with coaches' and staff's families while they eat.

The whole group gets to relax and spend time together (while they are consuming a healthy recovery meal). The nutrition staff is responsible for all vendors and menus utilized by the football team to assure that they are optimally refueling and recovering.

It's a great night that is fun to be a part of and easy to enjoy!

GatorBait.net: What exactly is your role as far as the day-to-day nutritional needs of the team. Not just those that need to gain or lose weight, but all the players?

Cheryl Zonkowski: The nutrition department helps fuel the football team each week, all week long. Our student-athletes enjoy the Training Table, which is the enhanced meal permitted by the NCAA to help optimally fuel athletes and give the nutritionists on staff the opportunity to interact with and hopefully educate student-athletes regarding healthy food and fueling choices.

Training Table is open Monday through Thursday throughout fall and spring semesters.

One of my responsibilities is to create the menus each week for the Training Table, as well as assure that the correct food specs and recipes are followed to assure that the student-athletes are getting the best fuel possible.

For example we only use lean beef for all ground beef entrees, like tacos or hamburgers, we also only use reduced fat cheeses and milk products, and we bake almost everything, nothing is fried, not even chicken fingers or fries.

These food specs help athletes realize that there are lower fat very tasty options out there and that different preparation methods can be just as tasty as some of their fried favorites.

GatorBait.net: What is your input as far as the game day meal is concerned?

Cheryl Zonkowski: I have also worked with Jon Clark to put together the Friday night and Saturday morning hotel meals that are the immediate fuel sources for the team before they play.

The Friday night meal consists of ideal fueling options such as lean protein and lean carbohydrate options with moderate amounts of fat.

Saturday morning breakfasts are more lean protein and lean carbohydrate sources such as eggs, bagels, pancakes, breakfast meat, fruit and cereals.

We focus on protein to help maintain and build muscle and lean carbohydrates to top off blood and muscle energy stores before the game.

We recommend moderate to low fat fuels because they take longer to digest so they sit in the stomach for a while and can make players feel heavy and lethargic and they can also negatively impact hydration status.

Both the strength and conditioning staff and I remind athletes why it's so important to make great choices before games and to help them stay on the right path to reaching their strength and fitness goals.

After the game players receive smoothies made with real fruit, a little sugar, and water. My game day responsibilities consist of making and serving the smoothies, as well as having a fresh supply of fruit outside of the locker room.

The fruit helps fuel the players before the game and during half-time to have energy readily available for kick-offs.

These smoothies help replenish the players' blood and muscle energy stored that they just used to play in the game.

Recovery is so important because their bodies will have to be 100% ready to go again by Sunday afternoon or Monday to lift and practice in preparation prepare for the next game.

GatorBait.net: It seems like supplements could be such a gray area. How do you monitor the intake of supplements and what is and isn't allowed?

Cheryl Zonkowski: As mentioned players receive supplements based on their medical histories, lab work and food recalls that take place when they first meet with me.

All supplement recommendations are made on an individual basis. Each football player has a vitamin drawer with his name on it so he can take his supplements each day to assure consistency.

All supplements provided are those permitted by the NCAA.

If a student-athlete is interested in taking a supplement that the Athletic Association is not permitted to provide (per the NCAA), I have to review the supplement, it's claims, and its contents before the player can take it.

This review is to help players learn about the products they are interested in as well as provide a line of defense to prevent a positive drug test.

Currently supplement companies are not strictly regulated by the government so anything a student-athlete takes; they take at their own risk.

There is no fool proof way to say that a supplement is safe or that it is effective either (unless a tremendous amount of research has been done on it).

The nutrition department oversees all supplement purchases and distribute within the Athletic Association.

GatorBait.net: Do any of the coaches ever ask you for advice on eating right?

Cheryl Zonkowski: As far as coaches go, I am happy to offer suggestions if they are interested. Obviously we want our coaches to be as healthy as possible also, but just like the student-athletes they have free will. I would say that most of them do a great job balancing the "healthy stuff" and their personal favorites! I do get questions from time to time and genuinely enjoy discussing nutrition with them. Not only is it beneficial to the coaches, but to the student-athletes they work with as well!

Over the past few years I truly believe that more of our coaches have "bought into" the relationship between nutrition and performance. This "buy in" has resulted in an increased interest in nutrition and an increased nutritionist presence with the team. Regarding certain foods that help with focus and performance, our team particularly loves smoothies!

The nutrition staff has at least a dozen recipes that involve fresh fruit, orange juice, milk, yogurt, frozen yogurt, peanut butter just to name a few. I would guess that the nutrition staff creates at least 70 smoothies per meal for both the players and coaches to help them fuel up!