Minium: New ODU Athletics Dining Hall is a Hit With Monarch Student-Athletes
By Harry Minium
NORFOLK, Va. – As you head to the “made to order action” station, you can pick your type of pasta or vegetables along with your choice of meat and watch it be cooked on a gas stovetop right in front of you. For breakfast, the cooks will fix a three-egg omelet with any combination of a dozen fixings.
The menu changes daily, but on this night the “comfort food” is Dijon herb flank steak with cut green beans and roasted red potatoes.
If that’s not enough, there is grilled seasoned chicken breast, Texas grilled cheese sandwiches, brown rice, cooked vegetables and Asian seared beef tips, all prepared by Chef Jackie Izzo and her team of half a dozen chefs.
And that’s just for starters. From soup to sides, the menu is long and varied.
There is a salad bar with more than a dozen veggie choices and with yogurt, fruit and whipped cream cheese.
And while this may sound like the menu from an awesome restaurant, it’s actually what’s cooking at Old Dominion University’s new Athletics Dining Hall.
With a capacity to feed 210 at a time, the dining facility opened last month to rave reviews from student-athletes, who say they love the food, the ambience and the camaraderie that comes from breaking bread with athletes from other sports teams.
More than 400 student-athletes have signed up for the meal plan, which is available only to athletes.
“The food is great, but the thing I like about this the most is interacting with athletes from other teams,” said Aryan Saleh, a junior from Frankfurt, Germany, who plays on the men’s tennis team. The atmosphere here is awesome. It’s just a very pleasant place. And you see people in here that you don’t see very often.”
CLICK HERE to see video of new ODU Athletics Dining Hall
Student-athletes have begun to turn the dining hall into something of a social gathering place. There are card and board games in a book case by the food entrance and on Tuesday night, some students were playing cards after enjoying a meal.
The dining hall is located in Whitehurst Hall, the six-story dormitory on the Elizabeth River adjacent to the ODU Sailing Center on the west side of campus. It is located in what was a vacant cafeteria that has undergone a massive renovation.
It is bright and airy with tons of natural light and is tastefully designed. Some walls are decked out in Hudson Blue and the wall at the serving area is plastered with ODU logos from the past.
There are nine TVs, but every night I’ve been there, no one was watching – they were too busy talking and enjoying their food.
The seating capacity could be larger, but tables and chairs were spread apart for a reason.
“We didn’t want the athletes to feel crowded,” said Shannon M. Hurt, Assistant Vice President for Campus Life Services. “Some of our athletes are pretty big and we wanted them to have space to walk around. We wanted to make sure when athletes walked in that they realized, this is their place. We want them to feel at home here.”
The serving area is spacious – it’s all you can eat, by the way – and you can see the food being prepared in the kitchen while filling your plate.
Except for the made to order station, it’s all self-service.
“We made it self-serve for a reason,” said Janet McLaughlin, who heads all food services operations on campus for Aramark, the university’s food services provider, including concessions at athletic events. “We want our athletes to be able to help themselves to however much food they think they need. After all, it’s all healthy food.”
The athletics dining hall was proposed two years ago and opened only after lots of careful planning. Two delegations from ODU visited different dining halls at Power 4 schools such as Clemson, South Carolina, North Carolina, Wake Forest, N.C. State and Virginia and there were Zoom tours as well.
“We tried to take the best ideas from all of the places we visited,” said Dr. Wood Selig, ODU’s director of athletics, who led the delegation to UVA.
He recalls asking the chef at UVA how they determine what to put on the menu each night.
“We serve what the athletes say they want to eat,” he said.
He brought that message back to Norfolk and with few exceptions, that’s exactly what cooks are doing at ODU’s new dining facility.
The exceptions? While college students love pizza, French fries, desserts and sodas, you won’t find them at the ODU facility. They simply aren’t good for you.
The menu is designed to provide athletes what they need to build muscle and energy for practice and competition.
McLaughlin said she and Izzo worked with nutritionists, coaches, sports performance coaches and other athletic officials to design the menu.
“Athletics gave us the parameters of what they wanted for the dietary needs of their athletes,” she said. “And we put together a menu based on that. We went over it with them several times to make sure we got it right. We have plenty of protein, vegetables and good carbohydrates.”
The dining hall offers juices, sports drinks, milk, water, coffee and tea. And as a concession to athletes who asked for it, low-fat chocolate milk was recently added.
The dining hall is just one of many ways the University has met needs voiced by student-athletes in end-of-the-year surveys. Shortly after I arrived on campus eight years ago, Dr. Selig said ODU needed to better serve the needs of its student-athletes, and has backed that up with action.
Student-athletes asked for better academic counseling and they got it, as ODU has more than doubled the size of its academic support staff.
They asked for better mental health counseling and they got it when the athletic department began its own counseling service.
Better and more convenient nutrition was another need and ODU reacted by putting nutrition fueling stations in the L.R. Hill Sports Complex, Jim Jarrett Administration Building and the Mitchum Basketball practice facility, and also began planning for the dining facility.
The foyer in the Jim Jarrett Building was renovated, with couches and chairs and a big-screen TV brought in to make that a gathering place for student-athletes.
And while I heard so many testimonials from students about how much they loved all of the previous upgrades, the dining hall appears to be the biggest hit.
“This is just so awesome,” said Grey Bremer, a member of the men’s swim team from Alexandria, Virginia. “What you guys have done for us is just unbelievable.
“The food here is so good. And this kind of forcing us to eat healthier. This is the kind of food we need for nutrition and performance. It’s amazing to have a place like this just for athletics,” added Koa Naotala, a linebacker on the football team. “The food here is good for us and the portion sizes are just what we need. And they’ve scheduled it around our practice times, which is super convenient.”
Mia Serna, a member of the women’s soccer team from El Paso, Texas, added that “I’m so very grateful to be a part of a university that puts our needs first. The food is really good and here. You’re always feeding your body with the right food, the food that will help you compete better. I’m so grateful that our athletics department cares so much about us.”
Dr. Selig smiled when he heard that comment, but noted that this was not just an athletic push. “This would not be possible without the support of our president,” he said of Brian O. Hemphill, Ph.D.
President Hemphill not only identified the empty Whitehurst cafeteria as a likely site, but the University helped fund the renovation of the dining hall.
Dr. Selig said that Dr. Brandi Hephner LaBanc, Vice President for Student and Campus Life, was also a key player in making the dining hall a reality.
While most Power 4 conference schools have athletics dining halls, they are rare in the Group of 6, and only a handful in the Sun Belt Conference have dining facilities for athletes.
“And no one in the Sun Belt has a facility like ours,” Dr. Selig said. “Ours is as good as you will find in many power conference schools.”
Dr. Selig said the dining hall will help recruiting.
“And because our student-athletes are now getting superior nutrition, this will help them perform better,” he added. “And it adds to their quality of life. We’re pleased to see how the athletes from so many different sports are mingling and getting to know each other better. If you’re a football player, there won’t be a lot of times when you run into a swimmer. Now, they’re all sitting down and not just eating together, but spending quality time together.”
Danielle Cohea, Senior Associate Athletic Director for Compliance, Conduct and Regulatory Affairs and Kieran Donohue, Assistant to the Athletic Director and Athletic Development Officer, have taken turns monitoring breakfast and dinner, which are each served five days a week.
“The athletes love the food,” Donohue said. “They appreciate what the university has done for them.”
About 60 student athletes, especially members of the swimming and sailing teams, live in Whitehurst Hall. Cohea said it’s likely that number will likely increase as more athletes will live in Whitehurst next year.
“The athletes who are able to come downstairs for breakfast or dinner, they love it,” Cohea said.
Lucia Gonzalez, a senior women’s golfer from Monterrey, Mexico, lives off campus but says she’s loves it as well. Students who live in apartments or houses often cook at home.
“Being able to walk in here and just fill up your plate is so convenient,” she said. “I don’t have to shop and then cook and that saves me a lot of time. And the food, it’s really good. It’s better than anything I could prepare at home.”
Minium is ODU's Senior Executive Writer for Athletics. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
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