How a Former Ski Racer Turned Personal Experience Into a Future in Sports Nutrition
Key Points
- Former competitive ski racer Mary Kate Hackworthy is pursuing a career in sports nutrition after experiencing firsthand the challenges many athletes face without access to nutrition support.
- Hackworthy graduated with a bachelor's degree in kinesiology and will continue at the University of Utah in the master's program in Nutrition and Integrative Physiology.
- Her goal is to work with athletes at smaller colleges, ski clubs, and community programs that lack dedicated sports dietitians.
Mary Kate Hackworthy knows what it feels like to compete without the support resources many athletes take for granted.
As a ski racer at Colorado Mountain College, she often dealt with severe stomach pain before competitions. At the time, she thought she was making healthy nutrition choices. Later, after taking nutrition courses, she realized her pre-race meals were likely contributing to the problem.
“I was eating higher-protein, higher-fiber foods right before competition,” she says. “If someone had told me to eat easily digestible carbohydrates before racing, that would have been really helpful.”
That experience helped shape her career goals. This spring she just completed her degree in Health and Kinesiology, and is continuing her education in the master's program in Nutrition and Integrative Physiology.
Along the way, Hackworthy earned some of the university's highest student honors. She received the Undergraduate Faculty Choice Award and the Outstanding Undergraduate Student of the Year Award from the Department of Health and Kinesiology, as well as the College of Health's Outstanding Undergraduate Senior Student Award. She was also selected to speak at graduation.
Hackworthy hopes to work with athletes who have limited access to nutrition support, especially those at smaller colleges, ski clubs, and other programs without dedicated sports dietitians. “I would like to work with athletes to help them fuel better,” she says. “There are a lot of athletes who don’t have access to the resources that Division I programs have.”
Her path to nutrition began long before she arrived at the university.
After moving to Colorado at 14 years old to pursue competitive ski racing with the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club, Hackworthy spent several years balancing academics and athletics. An ACL injury during a gap racing year became a turning point, sparking a deeper interest in health, human performance and rehabilitation. An additional tibia plateau injury during her first year racing for Colorado Mountain College (where she earned an associate’s degree in communication) furthered her passion for wellness, fitness and nutrition.
“Getting injured brought my interest in health and the physical world to a new level,” she says.
That curiosity led her toward kinesiology and eventually to strength and conditioning. While training and competing, she interned with the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club, where she worked alongside coaches supporting athletes in alpine skiing, snowboarding and moguls. The experience exposed her to the science behind athletic development and gave her a new perspective on her own training.
“It helped me understand why we were doing certain things,” she says. “Why are we doing higher reps? Why are we lifting heavier weights? Learning about strength, endurance and power made me much more interested in the training process.”
She later coached athletes on weightlifting fundamentals and assisted with strength and conditioning programming for the Steamboat Springs women’s hockey club.
When she transferred to the University of Utah in 2023, Hackworthy planned to pursue kinesiology while continuing to explore strength and conditioning. Along the way, faculty mentors and hands-on experiences introduced her to the field of nutrition and dietetics.
Through coursework, an independent study and experiences with University of Utah Athletics, she discovered nutrition offered the opportunity to combine her interests in performance, health and helping others.
“I was trying to figure out which path aligned most closely with the career I wanted,” she says.
This spring, she graduated with a bachelor's degree in kinesiology and will remain at the University of Utah to pursue a master’s degree in nutrition and integrative physiology.
Outside the classroom, Hackworthy has built extensive experience through her work at PEAK Health and Fitness, where she teaches group fitness classes, conducts Bod Pod assessments and works with personal training clients.
The variety of roles has helped her develop one of the most important skills in health and wellness professions: connecting with people.
“The biggest thing is learning how to work with different people,” she says. “Everyone comes in with different goals, different experiences and different comfort levels.”
Whether she is leading a fitness class, helping a new gym member feel more confident or creating a personalized workout plan, she focuses on meeting people where they are.
Tanya Halliday, associate professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology, says Hackworthy is someone who excels at everything she does. “What really stands out about MK is her genuine passion for helping others improve their health and well-being. Her experience as a college athlete, along with her training in kinesiology and nutrition, enable her to apply scientific information into actionable feedback for clients and those she serves in her volunteer roles.”
That approach has made a lasting impact on many of her clients at PEAK. Some have returned to her classes for months, allowing her to watch their confidence and fitness improve over time.
“It’s been really cool to see people get stronger and become more comfortable in the gym,” Hackworthy says.
While her long-term goal remains working with athletes, Hackworthy has discovered that helping everyday people improve their health can be just as rewarding.
“It is super rewarding to help everyday people live healthier,” she says.
For Hackworthy, the lessons she learned as a young athlete are now guiding her future career. As she begins graduate school, she hopes to help athletes gain access to the nutrition guidance she once lacked herself.
By combining her background in competitive sports, kinesiology and nutrition, she aims to ensure more athletes have the knowledge and support they need to perform at their best—regardless of the size or resources of their program.