First 3 honored by CPSDA: Remmers, Heitmeyer and Skinner
Service Award to Nebraska's Lindsey Remmers
Perseverance Award to Missouri's Jana Heitmeyer
Trailblazer Award to 'Pioneer' Rob Skinner
"Trailblazer " Rob Skinner presents at Scottsdale Conference.
Jana Heitmeyer, Rob Skinner and Lindsey Remmers receive commemorative plaques at the 1st Annual CPSDA Awards Banquet in Scottsdale, presented by Premier sponsor Solae, LLC.
The first-ever national recognition awards for service, perseverance and pioneering
were presented in May 2011 by the Collegiate & Professional Sports
Dietitians Association (CPSDA) to three Sports RDs whose specialization in “performance
nutrition” is only beginning to be acknowledged by sports industry leaders.
This new generation of “Sports RDs,” who protect athletes and employers by prioritizing healthier foods and steering away illicit drugs and potentially harmful food supplements, brought about the formation in 2009 of the CPSDA (www.SportsRD.org), a national not-for-profit organization dedicated to developing a select number of the nation’s 60,000 current and future registered dietitians into full-time performance nutrition specialists.
The CPSDA presented its
first-ever national awards to three Sports RDs May 24 in Scottsdale, Arizona to
recognize their special achievement in this emerging field:
2011 CPSDA Service Award
The 2011 CPSDA Service
Award was presented to Lindsey Remmers, a Registered Dietitian, Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics, and Licensed Medical Nutrition Therapist, who serves as Assistant Director of
Sports Nutrition
at the University of Nebraska. A native of Filley, NE
who attributes her can-do, self-starter approach to growing up on a farm,
Lindsey became a full-time Sports RD at Nebraska in 2008 (one of only six
universities in the U.S. with two full-time sports dietitians), where she works
alongside Josh Hingst to integrate healthy food choices and monitor supplement
usage for athletes in 23 sports. Lindsey
was singled out by the CPSDA Board of Directors for extraordinary service to
their fledgling organization, in particular for directing food services
during the CPSDA’s two most recent annual meetings. Lindsey received her bachelor of science
degree in Human Nutrition from Winthrop University in South Carolina, where she
was a member of the volleyball team, helping lead the team to two conference
championships as a player and to a third title as a volunteer coach. She earned
her master’s degree in health and human sciences at Nebraska in 2008. Lindsey has been lauded by colleagues for “setting
the gold standard for exemplary service to her profession and to her school,”
for which she received the first-ever CPSDA Service Award.
2011 CPSDA Perseverance Award
The 2011 CPSDA Perseverance
Award was presented to Jana Heitmeyer, Director of Sports Nutrition and
an assistant 
strength coach at the University of Missouri. Jana joined
the Missouri athletic staff as an assistant strength and conditioning coach in
2006, but continued her classroom work since then to earn her master’s degree
in Health Education and Promotion in 2006, and her dietetics degree in 2011. Jana grew up in the small town of Bluffton, Ohio
and attended Kent State University, where she earned bachelor’s degrees in
zoology and in pre-medicine. Jana was a
four-year letter winner and three-year captain of Kent State’s gymnastics team, and also
served 12 months as an intern in strength and conditioning, assisting in five
sports. Jana has earned high praise from
Missouri Athletic Director Mike Alden, who described her as “integral to the
fabric of the entire athletic program,” and from head football coach Gary Pinkel,
who said Jana has had a “profound impact on Missouri’s (successful) football
program” in recent years. In addition to
having her RD, Jana is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist by the
National Strength and Conditioning Association.
Her colleagues say Jana’s engaging personality draws athletes to
nutrition like moths to a flame, which is just one more reason that CPSDA is pleased
to present her with the organization’s first-ever Perseverance Award.
2011 CPSDA Trailblazer Award
The 2011 CPSDA Trailblazer
Award was presented to Rob Skinner, serving as counselor to Naval
Special Warfare in Virginia Beach, VA.
Rob
was among the first Sports RDs in the country to create a full-time "nutrition" position at a major college athletic program after earning his bachelor’s
degree in education and recreation from the University of Georgia in 1991. Rob later earned a second bachelor’s degree
in nutrition from Georgia State in 1997, and then a master’s degree in exercise
science from the same school in 2001. Rob served six years as director of Georgia
Tech’s Homer Rice Center for Sports Performance, where he was
responsible for the individual sports performance labs including sports
nutrition, sports physiology, sports psychology, sports vision and biomechanics,
where he worked daily with student-athletes from 17 sports. Rob has also served as a sports nutrition
consultant to the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons, as a part-time nutrition instructor at
Georgia State, and as the first Director of Sports Nutrition at the University
of Virginia. The Georgia Dietetic Association named Rob the Young
Dietitian of the Year in 2001. A
pioneer of sports nutrition from his earliest days, Rob is still blazing new
trails today by helping top athletes in the U.S. Navy maximize nutrition to test
the limits of their endurance. And along
the way Rob has created job opportunities for interns and fellow Sports RDs willing
to invest the extra time it takes to provide services to athletes, of all
types, who work year round. The CPSDA is very proud to present Rob
Skinner with its first-ever Trailblazer Award.
