NAIT food scientists help design sports drink for young athletes

Jen Koo’s sports nutrition venture was born of her role as a concerned parent, watching from courtside.

“I am the mom of a developing athlete,” she says. Koo’s son, Mattias, is 17 years old and has played volleyball since he was 11; now he’s entering the sport’s upper amateur levels. “Their training load can be quite intense.”

Koo found herself wanting to do more than just cheer on him and his teammates. She wanted a way to directly support their performance. “We were constantly stressing about how to fuel our kids in a way that was convenient and safe,” she says.

Conventional sports drinks struck her as the wrong way to do that. Commonly available products are made for adults, with sugar and salt content for mature bodies, as well as ingredients that aren’t appropriate for kids, such as caffeine.

After deciding to stand by and watch no longer, Koo’s Calgary-based company, League Nutrition Labs, is taking a run at changing the game, producing sports drinks for athletes of Mattias's age. Her first steps included doing her own research into the field, and even taking courses in nutrition.

Then, after researching potential Alberta partners with expertise in food science, she teamed up with NAIT.

Work began with the polytechnic’s Centre for Culinary Innovation (CCI) on a specially formulated hydration beverage in spring 2025. In May, Hydrate + Go, League’s first offering, hit the market as part of a soft launch. Now it’s available in about 15 stores across the province, mostly sports venues and pharmacies, as well as online.

There are two key differences between Hydrate + Go and other sports drinks, says Koo. One is the omission of unnecessary ingredients, such as artificial sweeteners, dyes or stimulants of any kind.

The other is that it’s tailored to youth physiology. “We didn't just take an adult product and try to make it smaller,” says Koo.

Instead, she considered the average mass of the bodies of youth and adolescents and the relative nutritional needs for peak athletic performance. Then she and CCI met those needs by developing a drink with a mix of complex carbohydrates for longer-lasting energy, and key electrolytes, substances that are lost in sweat but essential to a properly functioning body.

“Jennifer had a clear understanding and opinion on ingredients she wanted to use,” says Janik Hettinger (Culinary Arts ’25), the CCI food science technologist who led the project. Hettinger examined existing products, consulted Canadian food regulations, and considered the hydration and nutritional qualities of potential ingredients.

Throughout the process, he says, “we always got a lot of feedback from Jennifer.”

The outcome had to be easy to drink and kid friendly. The first flavour released is an all-natural take on a perennial favourite: blue raspberry. Next up in the Hydrate + Go line is a version similar to a white freezy, with a refreshing hint of citrus.

“League would not be where we are today without NAIT,” says Koo. “NAIT brought so many experts to the table in the early days of the project to really help us to understand how to go about bringing this product to commercialization.”

The relationship is set to continue. In addition to refining that next flavour, Hettinger will lead the development of what Koo calls League’s “recovery fuel.” Recover + Grow is a post-workout mix of protein and carbohydrates designed to help repair the body and replenish depleted nutrients.

Compared to Hydrate + Go, shelf stability will be harder to achieve for the recovery mix, depending on its protein source. “But we’re up for the challenge,” says Hettinger. League expects to introduce the product in late-2026.

In the meantime, Koo is happy to see Hydrate + Go already making a difference among young athletes. Early adopters are reporting greater endurance, less cramping during workouts, and other benefits.

“In fact, I had one track athlete who told me that their coaches remarked, ‘Where did this speed come from?’” says Koo. “That was after starting to use League as a pre-training fuel.”

While she may not have considered the impact the drink would have on herself, the new business may be fuelling a healthy sense of competition in her as well.

“We really don’t see sports nutrition for youth, for developing athletes,” says Koo. “So I'm really excited that here in Alberta, in partnership with NAIT, we can really say we’re the first in our category.”