EAST LANSING – Michigan State safety Xavier Henderson has appeared in all 36 games since joining the program.
Even with all that experience, fall camp this year brought a first for the senior starter. That came courtesy of center and locker mate Matt Allen.
“He comes in and his shoes are squishing around, and I hear it,” Henderson recalled of the 6-foot-3, 315-pound sixth-year senior. “I’ve never heard that. That sounds gross.”
Then Henderson went into the locker room at Hard Rock Stadium during halftime of last week’s game against Miami. En route to playing all 90 defensive snaps that day in south Florida, Henderson’s cleats felt heavy and he could relate to Allen.
Michigan State survived the challenge of playing in sweltering conditions and pulled away in the fourth quarter for a 38-17 win against then-No. 24 Miami. The victory was the reward for preparation throughout fall camp – from cranking up the temperature at the indoor facility in August to hydration – for the challenge of playing in the heat. That came with a lot of help from head football performance dietician Amber Rinestine.
“I kind of had like a little breakdown on the sideline because it was like, oh my gosh, it was all worth it,” Rinestine said. “Them being like, hey it worked. Our plan actually worked and it’s like hell yes it did. This is why we’ve been training like this.”
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Rinestine was hired in January by second-year coach Mel Tucker, who has consistently praised her performance and changes made within the program. Players and assistant coaches have routinely brought up her name – often unprompted – for the effect she has had.
“When she got here, you could see an immediate change in how much she cares,” fifth-year senior tight end Connor Heyward said. “She’s like a mom to all of us. … No words could really explain how much she’s done for us.”
Rinestine has always loved college football but didn’t initially plan on being involved in it professionally. She wanted to pursue a career in marine biology but said that dream died when she realized to cost of a doctorate degree didn’t justify the salary. The interest in science remained and became paired with nutrition after being involved in competitive body lifting.
“I think I’ve just always been competitive,” Rinestine said. “I always wanted to have the best grades in school, I always wanted to be the best at whatever I did so football fit really well with that because it’s also that way. I just want to be the best.”
Rinestine earned a bachelor’s degree in biology/biological sciences at Southwestern Oklahoma State and a master’s degree in nutritional sciences and dietetics at Oklahoma. She was a performance nutrition intern with the Sooners during the 2017 and 2018 seasons and had internships with the New York Jets and Philadelphia Eagles in 2019. Rinestine spent the 2020 season as a football nutrition fellow at North Carolina and also has experience working at IMG Academy in Florida and with the NFL Combine.
“I’ve been very purposeful in my career,” Rinestine said, “that I wanted to see every aspect of training because I wanted to relate to the players as much as possible.”
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It was while at IMG that Rinestine met Jason Novak, who Tucker hired last year as Michigan State’s head strength and conditioning coach. That connection led to an interview with Tucker, who brought up players always complaining about food and how that’s an easy area to address.
“He knew what to expect,” Rinestine said. “He knows what nutrition is and he knows the importance of it so it’s obviously been incredible support.”
Rinestine uses her pervious experience and the mentors she worked for to craft her own approach. The gist is her job is to do everything she can to help players perform at their peak potential. She compared her method to Novak’s because it involves adjusting for each player.
“I believe they’re individuals and not a team,” she said, “so trying to treat them as individuals to help the team is how I approach it and that’s how Novak does as well because he modifies everything.”
For all the support Rinestine has, including a team of 15 interns mixed between graduate and undergraduate students, there have been challenges. In June she posted a photo on Twitter of her car, and the roof rack on top, packed with food, with more left on carts while writing “what feeding a football team looks like for one week.” Shopping was an ordeal and even led to her bringing her fiancé along for a trip and his mom for another.
“That was a six-hour trip,” she recalled, “and it’s like I can’t do this during camp.”
Rinestine has since moved to using online ordering at Sam’s Club and a van is sent to pick up the food. The shopping is much easier but there’s still some convincing needed on her part to get players to eat the way she wants them to.
“Me and Amber, we had some growing pains, but she’s just going to keep on trying,” said linebacker Quavaris Crouch, who transferred from Tennessee in the offseason. “She’s going to work with what she’s got and keep on trying. And that’s the biggest thing I think that makes her super special compared to a lot of nutrition people I’ve been around. She’s just going to keep on trying. She always has a good attitude with it.”
That’s an appropriate description of Rinestine, a fitting hire for Tucker, who has used “relentless” as a motto since taking over the Spartans. She even noted her Instagram handle has been “relelentess_rinestine” since she was about 16.
Rinestine’s won’t accept no as an answer so that lead to a different approach with Crouch. He’s a native of Charlotte, N.C., who wasn’t used to eating in the morning or the different food after arriving in East Lansing.
“He really enjoys cooking, he really likes to cook so it’s like, OK, go cook,” Rinestine said. “Just let me know that you’re doing that so I know you’re eating dinner so that I’m not worried, ‘hey did you eat dinner tonight?’”
Although some players require regular check-ins, others don’t need as much supervision. Dashaun Mallory even went a bit overboard in committing to Rinestine’s plan. The redshirt junior defensive tackle lost about 80 pounds between last season and fall camp this year. Mallory in August said he weighed 270 and was looking to add pounds back on his frame.
“Dashaun is strictly dedication,” Rinestine said. “That kid took what I said and ran with it. Here’s the thing, I can talk and talk and talk and talk but at the end of the day it’s what they want to do and how they take it and the fact they have this much buy in has been incredible.”
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The commitment is a daily one for Rinestine and the players. Heyward said that includes shakes after every lift and practice while she makes the team faster and stronger.
“When I first got here we weren’t getting shakes” Heyward said. “Those were for guys who had ACL surgeries, stuff like that, where you just grab a Gatorade shake, a protein shake. Now, it’s actually being made in a blender and it’s legit. There’s kale, there’s all sorts of healthy vegetables. It’s ridiculous to see the change.”
Whether it’s losing weight, gaining it or just maintaining it, Rinestine, along with Novak and his staff and director of football sports science Bill Burghardt, are collaborating to get the most out of players. That requires tweaks and constant evaluation.
“To me, that’s what creates buy in is by listening to (players) and actually understanding where they’re coming from and then changing because of that,” Rinestine said. “I think that’s what creates the buy in and creates this passion that you guys see in these interviews and things like that, talking about it, because we actually listen to them, we take what they’re saying and use it to create a better plan.”
Michigan State prevailed in the heat at Miami and Tucker said the players’ GPS numbers were faster in the fourth quarter, when the Spartans outscored the Hurricanes 21-3, than in the first. The No. 20 Spartans (3-0, 1-0 Big Ten) are now 3-0 for the first time since 2015 and host Nebraska (2-2, 0-1 Big Ten) on Saturday (7 p.m., FS1) in East Lansing. So, what’s the next challenge?
“We are now in the fourth game so our recovery is going to be a little bit different than our first game,” Rinestine said. “You bounce back a lot quicker in your first game. Well, your fourth game, now it’s like, OK, now we’re in it where you have to be relentless in your recovery. You have to be doing this every single day. It’s not because you want to, now it’s because you have to. We want you to recover, we want you to be fresh. I think that’s kind of the like next big thing, getting these guys to buy into that – how do you recover better?”
From shakes to electrolyte packets to vitamins to snacks for classes and during games, Allen said there are more options than in the past. In addition to the choices, it’s the individual approach.
Allen recalled Michigan State’s trip to Northwestern for the season opener and how running back Kenneth Walker III, a transfer from Wake Forest, likes cereal. He said Rinestine packed some just for Walker, who rushed for 264 yards and four touchdowns to lead the Spartans to a win in his program debut.
“Amber’s been amazing, that’s all I can really say,” Allen said. “She’s just been awesome. I tell her every day she’s awesome and she’s the best because she goes above and beyond what she has to do to provide us with nutrition and hydration and things like that. She’s just very good at her job and an extremely hard worker and I’m very happy that she’s a part of this program.”
Related Michigan State football stories:
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Spartan Confidential podcast: Michigan State takes Miami, here come the Huskers
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