(The Rock Report) – Just two months after ND Strength and Conditioning coach Ruben Mendoza called nutrition the “missing link in athletic performance”, Notre Dame announced the formation of a new Athletic Performance Division. Said Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick, “The goals and expectations of athletics at Notre Dame necessitate finding ways for our student-athletes to optimize their efforts when they compete at the championship level of our programs. That doesn’t happen by accident.”

Mark Karwowski, A 16-year veteran of the Notre Dame athletics administration, will coordinate efforts to enhance areas such as strength and conditioning, athletic training and physical therapy, sports medicine, nutrition, sports psychology and others that contribute to student-athletes’ physical welfare and on-field performance.

Currently Notre Dame does not have a training table as most schools with high level sports programs do, which many believe hurts Notre Dame’s ability to compete during a long football season in a program that has to play athletes earlier in their careers.

While this move still has to play out, the continued cadence of sound, constructive moves from the Athletic Department provides mounting evidence that, after a decade of incompetence and fecklessness, Notre Dame may have finally found an Athletic Director equal to the challenge of upholding Notre Dame’s long tradition of Athletic excellence. While the jury is still out and there are major issues such as scheduling on the horizon and that small problem called winning, the needle, at the very least, appears to be pointed in the right direction for Swarbrick, which would be welcome news to long suffering Irish fans.