Purdue student-athlete garden helps fuel performance from the ground up

Written By: Rebecca Hoffa, rhoffa@purdue.edu

For Isaiah Schaefer, Purdue University wrestler and Department of Nutrition Science (NUTR) sophomore, fueling his body to perform on the mat starts with a green thumb.

Schaefer, who is majoring in nutrition and dietetics in the College of Health and Human Sciences, not only has a personal garden at his home near campus, but he also actively participates in the university’s student-athlete garden, located on the east side of the football practice fields. The student-athlete garden enables Purdue student-athletes to not only experience the full life cycle of vegetables, fruits and herbs but also take fresh produce with them to incorporate into their daily diets.

“It’s really powerful to see what you do actually matters,” Schaefer said. “When I show up, pull weeds and water my plants, they grow. I could have a terrible day, not be doing well in my classes or have had a hard practice, but I know through picking the weeds and planting and watering my plants, they’re going to grow. It’s a really good allegory for life — just be consistent, and you reap what you sow.”

The student-athlete garden is the brainchild of Lauren Link, assistant athletics director of sports nutrition and NUTR alumna, to help student-athletes learn where their food comes from and offer them more ways to boost their vegetable intake. With support from Purdue’s administration, the College of Agriculture, and Purdue Grounds, the garden took off and has flourished with anywhere from 20-30 student-athletes regularly participating each semester.

“It started 11 years ago or so, within my first year of working here, and at the time, it felt like we talked a lot about being really passionate in our department about education and building healthy habits for life, and the garden fit into that,” Link said. “Since I like to garden — I keep a small garden at home — I had the thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we could teach our student-athletes how to garden and then also have this benefit where they can take veggies or herbs home?’”

For Link, who in her role assists student-athletes with balancing their meals and assessing their food options to match their athletic goals, the garden offers a great opportunity to allow them to branch out and try new things.

“I think it’s important to understand these things because they just see what’s in the grocery store, which are the perfect-looking tomatoes, but the tomatoes in the garden are how they really look,” Link said. “It teaches them sustainability and how to grow their own food. We also want to get more veggies in their diet, so the garden can help them with that too. We always grow zucchini, and we’ll have a ton of it. We have so many athletes who’ve never cooked a zucchini. So that kind of lesson is cool. When we get the videos or pictures of our athletes saying they made this from the garden or are trying this for the first time, that kind of stuff is really fun.”

While the garden has become a staple for student-athletes looking to learn new skills and grow their own food, it has also become a refined system throughout the years in understanding the vegetables that grow well and those that don’t. Link noted the garden has even come with its own surprises in producing hybrid and volunteer plants.

“In terms of evolving, probably the biggest thing is the different plants we grow,” Link said. “Some things we’ve grown, and it doesn’t work very well, especially for what we want to do with it. Watermelon is one we’ve grown a few times, and they take up a lot of space and make three watermelons, so there’s not a lot of ROI for that. We’ve made our own little subspecies of tomatoes, so we don’t even plant tomatoes. We have hundreds, probably thousands come back from just volunteer plants. We have had a species crossbreed, so we get these pretty big orange cherry tomatoes. We never planted those, so things like that are pretty cool.”

Produce grown in the garden that is not taken for the student-athletes’ personal use is either used in the Gelov Family Performance Athletic Dining (PAD) facility, which feeds Purdue’s student-athletes, or donated to local organizations such as Food Finders Food Bank.

“It’s been really cool — because I’ve been working in the PAD — just to see the process of how we can take this food that might not seem as appetizing on its own and turn that into a menu item that the athlete will want,” said Kayleigh Flach, a nutrition and dietetics student and sports nutrition intern with Purdue Athletics. “It’s just really fun seeing those different ingredients.”

Because he participates in a high-intensity sport, getting enough energy and building muscle is important to Schaefer’s wrestling success. Gardening has helped him choose the best ingredients and make stronger fueling decisions.

“I’ve kind of been on the weight gain side of things, and I think ultimately, the best course of action for helping my performance is to be intentional,” Schaefer said. “It’s the same thing as when I’m growing plants. I’m being intentional about how, when and why I water them; where I put the plants; and the soil I use. The garden helps me stay on the natural side of things — the less ingredients, the better.”