Welcome to Megan Chacosky, the new Craftsbury Outdoor Center dietician
My ears perk up to snippets of conversation - some of my Green Racing Project teammates excitedly await working with a nutritionist’s expertise while others, merely lacking that experience, are unsure of what is ahead. We’re gathered on the Activity Center porch to hear from Megan Chacosky, the GRP’s first sports dietician.
“I take a person-first approach to nutrition,” she says, sharing that she’ll work with us to incorporate healthy food practices into our lives that will benefit us primarily as people and then as athletes. Megan is thoughtful, confident, and obviously knows what she is doing. We learn that as both a registered dietician and trained chef, Megan has the unique skills and knowledge to effectively incorporate sport-specific dietetic principles into homemade meals while traveling with us on the road. While she’s not supporting teams during travel, she’ll work one on one with athletes, helping us use nutrition to meet specific training and life goals. We all scribble down our emails to sign up for meetings, curious, ready to explore this new world with someone so qualified. Welcome to the team, Megan!
Megan’s journey into high level sport nutrition started unconventionally, as a baker. After high school, she attended Johnson and Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island where she became a baking and pastry arts chef. From there, she moved back to her home state of Pennsylvania to study dietetic and clinical nutrition services at Immaculata University while competing in both soccer and lacrosse. Having always loved sport, Megan decided to professionally combine her passions by pursuing a Masters degree in Nutrition, with an emphasis on sports nutrition, at the University of Utah. That degree opened the door to a role as the high performance chef for U.S. Ski and Snowboard, where she honed her on-the-road cooking skills for three years. Megan then transitioned into a more all-encompassing role within the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) as both a performance chef and sports dietician consultant. Now, eight years since finishing her masters, she has worked with 18 different US Olympic sports, including skiing and biathlon. It was during these years working in winter sport that Megan first experienced the Craftsbury Outdoor Center and worked closely with a handful of Green Racing Project athletes.
“Megan has empowered me to make the best nutritional decisions for my body,” says Kelsey Dickinson, a GRP biathlete who has worked with Megan through the USOPC. “She is thoughtful, compassionate, and the best in her field. With her support I have an invaluable resource to consult, learn from, and share my successes with.”
Jake Brown, another biathlete at Craftsbury, has also benefited from Megan’s work. “Megan not only makes tasty meals and is a great resource for all things nutrition and recipes,” he says, “but she also is a great teammate and an excellent communicator. I’m excited to have her as a part of the Craftsbury team because she understands how sport, rest, work, and food are all part of a healthy life balance.”
With multiple athlete testimonials like this, it became clear to Judy Geer, part of the Center management team, that Megan would be an exceptional asset not only to the Green Racing Project skiing, biathlon, rowing, and running teams, but to the other programs that Craftsbury supports. "What inspired bringing Megan on at COC was the realization that she could help in so many ways, with so many of our athlete groups and programs - not just the GRP,” Geer says. “Good nutrition is obviously a key piece of high-performance athletic achievement, so GRP athlete support and performance are high priorities. But good nutrition, and education about healthy eating, is also important to our junior athletes, and it should also be of interest to all the athletes of different levels who come to our camps.” Additionally, Geer saw the value of adding Megan’s sports nutrition perspective to the already highly esteemed menu of the dining hall.
But it wasn’t just the folks at Craftsbury that wanted Megan to join the team. The interest was mutual.
“As I continued to grow personally and professionally in previous roles I found myself gaining the most confidence, joy, and positive impact in many of the spaces the GRP emphasizes: maintaining motivation and determination, prioritizing conscientiousness and sustainability, and practicing openness towards ourselves and others,” Megan says.
When Megan came to Craftsbury to support camps for the U.S. Biathlon team over the years, she experienced those values of the Outdoor Center’s programming and community first hand. She wanted to be a part of it. “Especially given the opportunity to deeply re-evaluate how we take care of ourselves and others throughout the COVID pandemic, I knew I wanted to become more intentional about how I was using my time, energy, and skills to help a broader community of people connect with themselves and their food in a meaningful way. Once offered the potential of a full-time role here, Craftsbury immediately felt like the best place for me to continue leaning into these important areas, while helping support a greater good.”
Not only that, but her work within Olympic sport led to friendships with GRP athletes and she experienced a community in the Northeast Kingdom that drew her in. So, after finishing out the last Olympic cycle with the USOPC, Megan excitedly accepted the opportunity to work with the COC.
“To be asked to join this community, to have not only the right skills but also the right character, to be considered as someone who could help improve upon the already-incredible things that are happening in Craftsbury continues to feel like a huge honor,” she says.
“Any time we make a change or start something new, we have the opportunity to intentionally choose the awkward, potential-to-fail, unknown, uncomfortable path. So I’m channeling any nervous energy into staying excited about showing up authentically to learn and grow from the vast resources of people within this new living and work setting.”
Well, from the athletes who sat on the Activity Center porch, the honor is ours, Megan. And we look forward, as you seem to have done with each new step in your life, to intertwining change with learning, with opportunity, with growth, together.