Hokie ClubBLACKSBURG – Virginia Tech Football head coach Brent Pry announced Monday that Carly Harris remains with the Hokies performance staff as a director of sports nutrition – football and that Bryan Jackson has been hired in the newly-created position of director of sports science – football. Both Harris and Jackson will work in close conjunction with Pry, as well as director of football strength and conditioning Dwight Galt IV, Tech's sports medicine and athletic training team, and the rest of the football staff.
Harris is a registered dietician who joined the Hokies in July 2020. Since her arrival in Blacksburg, she has coordinated all of the nutrition needs for the football program, ranging from meals in Tech's Student-Athletic Performance Center, to pregame and postgame meals at home and on the road, as well as other supplemental dietary needs. In addition, Harris manages Tech's fueling stations, oversees inventory and ordering of products and the production of pre-fueling nutraceuticals and individualized recovery shakes. She develops programmatic nutritional education materials, presentations and events for Tech's football student-athletes, as well as assessing and analyzing dietary practices, body composition and energy balance of student-athletes in the context of athletic performance and health.
The Minnesota native earned a bachelor's degree in foods & nutrition from the University of Prince Edward Island. She also holds a bachelor's degree in sport management from Trinity Western University in British Columbia, Canada. Prior to joining the Hokies she spent a year as a sport nutrition fellow at the University of Illinois, providing nutritional care for the Fighting Illini football team, as well as the Illinois swimming and diving teams. While at Illinois, Harris was responsible for counseling student athletes on optimal nutrition for training, competition, recovery, weight management, hydration, disordered eating, travel, and supplementation and as coordinating body composition assessments using GE Lunar iDXA and InBody.
Before joining the Illinois football program, Harris served as a volunteer with the NHL's New Jersey Devils, where she assisted the medical staff with athletic testing during development camp and attended team education sessions.Jackson joins the Hokies after serving in a similar role at William & Mary in 2021. With the Tribe, Jackson designed and implemented the athletics performance programs for football and multiple other sports. In addition, Jackson oversaw the biomechanical testing of athletes, as well as the collection and analysis of GPS tracking data.
He previously worked as a sports performance coaching assistant at Duke where he assisted in the implementation of sports performance programs for lacrosse, track and field, baseball, softball, rowing, swimming and dive, fencing and wrestling. He also served as the director of strength and conditioning at West Virginia State where he oversaw the strength and conditioning programs for all sports.
A U.S. Army veteran, Jackson saw combat duty in Iraq and served as a parachutist and scout with the 82nd Airborne Division. He began his coaching career as a strength and conditioning coach at Sacramento State Aquatic Center before working as a sports performance intern at Old Dominion under Galt in 2019. He completed his bachelor's degree in exercise science from California State - Sacramento and received his master's degree in applied physiology and kinesiology from the University of Florida.