Cavalier Corner is the publication just for UVa sports fans!
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cavalier sports JUNE 2021 7 Ranallo assists Virginia's football players with all their training and nutrition goals. PHOTO BY JIM DAVES/COURTESY UVA behind the scenes Sports Dietitian Vincenza Ranallo A fter starting a newly created position within the athletics department last summer in the midst of a global pandemic, Virginia football's sports dietitian Vincenza "Enza" Ranallo has settled in very nicely over the past 10 months. After spending two years at Stanford, Ranallo hit the ground running in Charlottesville last summer in order to catch up on the nutrition needs of the football student-athletes. "Not only did I need to transfer across the United States from Palo Alto to Virginia, I also had to learn all the needs of every student-athlete on the team," Ranallo said. "I needed to learn what gaps needed to be filled, what development needed to be pursued and what direction we needed to take it. "We needed additional body composition changes and we needed to really develop these guys in that aspect of their train- ing. I spent a lot of time early on learning all their preferences and making sure they had body composition goals and how nu- trition could correlate with their weight room goals. I needed to implement all of that." The coordination Ranallo took on with Shawn Griswold, UVA's director of football development and performance, and his staff has been vital to the success of all football student-athletes' training. All year long, Griswold and his staff work on body composition of the football student-athletes and Ranallo has fit right in with that task. "Something that I really value is body composition," Ranallo said. "We'll test the body composition of all the student-athletes, three to four times a year, so that correlates directly to when they're doing testing in the weight room for state changes and for their progression in the weight room with Coach Griswold. "What is awesome is that the athletes can see how their body composition has changed and improved, or maybe not so, and how that correlates with their body as well as their weight lifting numbers. "I work closely with the football performance staff as well as sports medicine. We talk not just strength, but we talk about hydra- tion and talk about injury and risk protocols we are implementing, clinical nutrition for supplements, as well as making sure that their protocols to rehab are really good or prevention protocols are re- ally good in the strength area, as well as in athletic training. "It is a very tight-knit triangle between the three of us." Ranallo has been excited about her role in the education of the football student-athletes and helping them obtain their athletic goals. "Essentially what we are coaching these athletes up on is how to transform their body," she said. "I receive them with a phy- sique of a high schooler and my job is to make sure they trans- form their body composition to NFL-ready within the first three to five years. "There is a lot of different components of education that we're always presenting to these athletes to make sure they understand that if they can get their body composition to where it needs to be, they have a better chance at going to the NFL or being more successful at their position." With almost a year under her belt in Charlottesville, Ranallo is excited for her second year. "This first year has been a tornado of chaos with the pan- demic," Ranallo said. "But it has been a fantastic transition and I am excited as we move forward working behind the scenes to assist our student-athletes with their training and nutrition goals." — Vincent Briedis