Wednesday, March 29, 2023 /
/ Women’s Month — 7

It was six o’clock in the morning. 
The sun hadn’t even begun to rise and 
Ann Arbor was still bundled up under 
the covers. Most people hadn’t stepped 
out of bed, let alone started their day. 
But Abigail O’Connor isn’t most 
people.
At 6 a.m., football practice was 
well underway, and she was doing what-
ever it took to motivate her players. 
Even if that meant taking strength and 
conditioning coach Ben Herbert’s gru-
eling fitness test.
So at the crack of dawn, while most 
people’s movements remained only 
in their ongoing dreams, O’Connor 
settled in next to an offensive lineman 
coming off of a broken ankle and took 
that test. It’s a test designed for football 
players who put in hours in the gym and 
on the field day in and day out. It’s a test 
designed to push you to your limits. It’s 
a test designed to agonize you. 
But for O’Connor, a nutritionist 
who doesn’t spend most of her day in 
the weight room like her players, that 
didn’t scare her. She remained by her 
player’s side and completed the strenu-
ous physical challenge. For O’Connor, 
her job title as director of performance 
nutrition means a lot more than simply 
tailoring diets for her players.
“Because you’re always around 
them, you kind of see that entire expe-
rience,” O’Connor told The Michigan 
Daily. “And, alright you broke your an-
kle. From a nutrition’s standpoint what 
can we do to make this recovery process 
a little bit better? And then you kind of 
get wrangled into doing things. Like, 
yeah I’ll run the conditioning test with 
you at six in the morning.”
Growing up, O’Connor never 
imagined this line of work for herself. 
She didn’t go to college interested in 
spending her days guiding some of the 
highest caliber college athletes. In fact, 
she didn’t even grasp the fact that she 
could spend her days doing that. 
“My undergrad degree was in 
biology, and I was taking a couple of 
exercise physiology courses during my 
undergrad, and one of them was a sport 
nutrition independent study,” O’Con-
nor said. “It was the first semester of my 
senior year in college, I was like, ‘Oh, 
people get paid to talk about (nutrition) 
all the time.’ So I found out you can have 
this as a career pretty late in college and 
applied to graduate school to get my 
masters in nutrition.
“… I quite literally fell into it.”
Three years later, after spending 
time at Houston as a performance nu-

trition intern and at Minnesota as the 
director of sports nutrition, she took the 
next step in her career. And that brought 
her to Michigan.
As a woman, a leadership job at 
one of the most prestigious college 
football programs in the country could 
be considered daunting. The sport in-
dustry generally is a male-dominated 
field, and football is one of the most 
male-dominated sports. But O’Connor 
wasn’t intimidated, instead taking the 
opportunity for herself and using that to 
help her players.
“I think it’s really important for 
our athletes to be around women and 
to be around professional women who 
are enthusiastic about their sport, en-
thusiastic about their development,” 
O’Connor said. “… I think it just adds 
to the entire experience of our athletes 
to be around women in sport, and wom-
en who are enthusiastic about growing 
support.”
O’Connor’s enthusiasm and moti-
vation shines in her work. Throughout 
her time with the Wolverines, O’Con-
nor has thrived in her role of developing 
the team’s nutrition. The time players 
put in on the field, in the weight room 
and watching film is what first comes to 
mind for many when thinking about pre-
paring and working before a game. But 
nutrition is equally important. Getting 
more than 100 Division-I football play-
ers to change their diets and commit to 
healthy habits is no easy task, though. 
Food is fuel, and for athletes who 
spend thousands of hours working on 
their body, why should they listen to 
some stranger about changing the way 
they eat?
Because it’s not a stranger telling 
them. O’Connor realized that without 
meaningful relationships with her play-
ers they wouldn’t have any reason to lis-
ten to her. So she found the best way to 
get the team on board: 
Trust. 
“There’s a lot of trust that’s built 
first,” O’Connor said. “And that’s 
what’s kind of built that buy-in. Come 
first with the trust and second with the 
information.”
That buy-in is everything. If 
O’Connor is providing excellent infor-
mation, but there’s no trust, the players 
have no reason to listen. And when that 
happens, everyone loses. O’Connor 
can’t do her job to the best of her ability 
and the players’ bodies can’t perform 
their best. But O’Connor made sure that 
wouldn’t happen.
How?
Remaining clear in her motivation. 
She just wants the players to be as good 
as she knows they can be. 
“I get no benefit from you eating 

the broccoli, you’re the one getting all 
this benefit,” O’Connor said. “And I’m 
pushing for you to be the one who’s im-
proving.”
If Michigan’s players don’t under-
stand why O’Connor is pushing them so 
hard, it’s tough to reap all of the rewards 
of her guidance. Luckily, the Wolver-
ines have bought in, not only under-
standing her motivation and trust, but 
using it to improve themselves.
Not only have the players grown 
to trust O’Connor, but O’Connor has 
grown to trust them too.
“She took care of me my first three 
years,” defensive lineman Mazi Smith 
told The Daily. “Last year, she start-
ed being able to let me go because she 
knew I was going to do the things that 
we worked on. It was rough to start it, 
but once we got to go on everything, ev-
erything went right along.”
Smith is a player who bought in 
right away. He knew the player he was 
capable of being and was prepared to do 
anything and everything to achieve that. 
And that meant treating his body right, 
not only in the gym, but also at the table.
“I think if you had told Rec-Specs 
wearing Mazi, ‘Hey, you’re going to be 

the number one freak in the country 
your senior year,’ he would not be sur-
prised whatsoever,” O’Connor said. 
“But he was very well aware of all the 
work he was going to have to put in, 
and that kid was on my hip for his entire 
freshman year.”
That dedication paid off for Smith. 
Since that freshman year of turning to 
O’Connor for all guidance related to 
what he put into his body, he has taken 
immense strides. Not only did he build 
30 pounds of muscle and work his way 
to becoming a widely-regarded second 
round pick in the upcoming NFL Draft, 
but he also developed habits that ex-
tend beyond those accomplishments. 
Through that process, Smith grew a 
healthy relationship with food that will 
help him continue to prosper. 
And that’s thanks to O’Connor 
and her dedication. 
Arriving at Schembechler Hall at 6 
a.m. everyday shows just how strong that 
dedication is. She doesn’t put in hours 
for conditioning, fine tune her agility or 
run drawn up plays. But she still has an 
impact. Because at six in the morning, 
when Ann Arbor is still sleeping, she’s 
there. 

She has made it clear that she’s 
here to do whatever it takes to help the 
team.
“I will go through the lift, like 
I’ve run our conditioning tests so that 
when I sit and talk to them about it I 
have first-person experience,” O’Con-
nor said. “Yes, (the test) is a bummer, it 
does suck. I’m there at practices, I pop 
into meetings to get a more clear under-
standing of what they’re doing and what 
their goals are.”
Because each player’s individual 
goal is unique. For Smith, it was fueling 
his body correctly, and adopting healthy 
habits. For defensive end Mike Morris, 
O’Connor composed ways to add lean 
mass to specific areas to improve his 
craft. For wide receiver Ronnie Bell, 
O’Connor helped him embrace his in-
jury and use the adversity to tweak the 
way he runs.
But beyond players’ individual 
goals lie one shared mission — to win. 
Although O’Connor isn’t on the field 
running drills or calling up plays, she 
plays a huge role in that mission all from 
her desk.
And sometimes at the start line of a 
6 a.m. conditioning test.

Fueling championship football: Abigail 
O’Connor making mark at Michigan

LINDSAY BUDIN
Daily Sports Writer

Courtesy of Michigan Athletics

