Southwestern Alumna Inspires Peak Performance for the Michigan Wolverines

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Southwestern Alumna Inspires Peak Performance for the Michigan Wolverines

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While confetti fell from the NRG Stadium rafters to celebrate the University of Michigan football team's victory in the 2024 National Championship Game, Abigail O'Connor '13 knew thatherseason was just about to begin.

As the Wolverines' Director of Football Performance and Development, O'Connor's busiest time of the year is the off-season, when she works directly with Michigan student-athletes to develop their bodies in preparation for the upcoming football season.

Entering her seventh year with the University of Michigan, the former Pirates softball star's primary role is to ensure that all football student-athletes' needs are met from a diet and nutrition standpoint. This includes not only providing the food itself, but also the assessment and education surrounding dieting and body composition.

"The unique experience that I had at Southwestern definitely set me up to be successful in the unique experience that I'm having now." - Abigail O'Connor '13

"If they eat it, we are looking at it and making sure that it is appropriate," O'Connor said. "A lot of what we're doing is not necessarily assigning them a meal plan, but giving them a baseline education surrounding nutrition so that they can have a good relationship with food and a good understanding of what different foods are going to do for them from a performance standpoint."

In her role, O'Connor oversees two dietitians and a member of the nutrition operations staff. She also serves as the team's head dietitian, responsible for assisting in nutrition education for over 100 student-athletes, most ranging from 18 to 22 years old.

"They're college kids, so they want to eat chicken tenders, but for the most part, they are very internally motivated," O'Connor said. "They have larger goals beyond just enjoying the meal that they're eating. They want to play at a pretty high caliber here then go on to the NFL. What you're eating has to align with what your overall goals are."

(Image courtesy University of Michigan)On game days, O'Connor can be found on the Michigan sidelines, attending to student-athletes in real time as they come off the field. Given the nature of her role, she doesn't get to see much game action, but during Michigan home games at the historic "Big House," - the largest stadium in the United States and the third-largest stadium in the world - sell-out crowds of nearly 110,000 fans help keep her in touch with what's happening on the field.

"You can feel the energy of the crowd on every explosive play and every first down," she said. "With that many people, you can feel the momentum shifts of the game, even without having to watch it. It's definitely unique working at a place like Michigan and in a stadium like the Big House."

Although she was a biology major at Southwestern, O'Connor credits her time at SU for developing her passion for nutrition and dietetics. Many of O'Connor's softball teammates and friends at Southwestern were kinesiology majors, allowing her to experience research projects involving exercise physiology.

"I was in the kinesiology lab because my friends needed participants for their capstone," she said. "I got exposure to something that I maybe wouldn't have gotten exposure to had I gone to a larger school, or a school that didn't allow its undergraduates students to explore research in the way that Southwestern does."

It was through this time in the kinesiology lab that sparked O'Connor's interest in nutrition, ultimately leading her to pursue an independent study course to learn more about sport nutrition and how she could turn her passion into a career.

"I was pretty adamant about what I wanted my collegiate experience to look like, both as a student and as an athlete," O'Connor said. "I wanted to be challenged and take classes with people with different interests and learn from them. Plus, I wanted to actually play in my sport. I wasn't blessed with the same genetics that the athletes I work with now have, but I still got to play the sport that I love and I got to learn in a unique environment. Southwestern gave me both opportunities."

During her time on the softball diamond, O'Connor helped guide the Pirates to a pair of Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC) Championships and NCAA Division III Softball Tournament appearances in 2010 and 2013. Her senior year, O'Connor started all 45 games for the Pirates, leading the team with a .421 batting average and earning 2013 First Team All-SCAC honors. Her success as a catcher on the softball field has translated to success as a staff member on the football field.

"Being a staff member here, I have a full appreciation that the staff is the team that supports the team," she said. "I support [Michigan Head Coach] Sherrone Moore and he supports the student-athletes. I support [Michigan Director of Strength and Conditioning] Justin Tress and he supports the student-athletes. We are a team in that sense. My experience being on the softball team helps me be a better support staff member and have a better understanding of the team around the team."

After graduating from Southwestern with a major in biology and a minor in anthropology, O'Connor earned her masters' degree in nutrition sciences from Texas A&M University. She then completed dietetic and sport nutrition internships at the University of Houston, which ultimately led to a role as Assistant Director of Sports Nutrition at the University of Minnesota.

(Image courtesy University of Michigan)She joined the University of Michigan staff in 2018 and has been helping Wolverines student-athletes perform at their highest levels ever since. Across her nearly 10 years in Division I collegiate football, she has seen the landscape evolve over time, with the importance of nutrition taking center stage.

"There has been an explosion in athletic departments supplying nutrition provisions, establishing athlete-only dining halls, and increasing the number of dietitians that are available," she said. "That's a direct response to making sure that you know you're putting your student-athletes in the best situation to be successful."

As another college football season begins this fall, O'Connor is set to once again use the foundation of success that she developed at Southwestern to help Michigan make a run at another National Championship in 2025.

"The unique experience that I had at Southwestern definitely set me up to be successful in the unique experience that I'm having now," O'Connor said.

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