Pump it up

Program helps Evergreen Junior High students stay fit during the summer

If a summer fitness program keeps up its current pace, the Evergreen Junior High Wolverines may be nearly as tough as their mascot before long.

The Evergreen Fitness Team, now in its third summer of a six-week daily regimen, has fifth- through eighth-graders pumping iron, trotting on treadmills and working up a sweat in dodgeball and scooter games.

Evergreen P.E. teacher and Fitness Team director Ross Darner sees some great progress after three years.

"The coolest thing for us is we're seeing the kids motivated to work on their fitness," Darner said.

On Monday morning, he watched over a gym full of seventh- and eighth-graders running and rolling about in scooter-board races.

Casey Bertram, Darner's assistant and Edgerton Elementary's P.E. teacher and assistant principal, patrolled among them.

In each scooter pair, one student sat on a low-profile wheeled board while the other stayed on his or her feet to act as the propulsion. In one challenge, the runner pulled the sitter by the hand as the two raced to the other end of the gym to grab one of the "flag" strips on the floor. In another challenge, they engaged in a feisty tug-of-war with another scooter pair.

All the while, they were testing their strength and building cardiovascular fitness - and moving. It was a boisterous session among students determined to win points in the challenges, points that ultimately garner weekly and end-of-summer prizes.

Since Darner started the team with 54 youngsters in summer 2004, his roster has grown by more than 55 percent to this year's 84 active participants.

"If it wasn't fun, we wouldn't have almost a third of our student body here," Darner said.

The program got started during the 2003 school year when a P.E. for Progress federal grant dedicated a portion of its budget to the junior-high initiative.

Piggybacking with school construction that was under way, Darner got a fitness room built and equipped in 2004. He underwrote the cost by winning grants based on a curriculum he developed to help students explore physical fitness careers and develop lifestyles to counter obesity.

Community business grants also continue to support the Fitness Team project.

By hosting a spring carnival, car washes and other fundraising efforts, Darner and the students come up with the rest of the funding needed to keep the program free of charge to all Evergreen students.

Although funded in part by the Gear-Up grant, the Evergreen Fitness Team is unique, Darner said.

"This is the only program of its kind in the state," he said, with its summer sessions based solely on physical fitness.

Twenty-eight seventh- and eighth-graders attend in the morning, and 56 fifth- and sixth graders participate in the afternoon.

For the first hour, they work on cardiovascular fitness and weight training geared to the individual. Younger students focus on such aspects as proper lifting techniques, while the older ones work to build muscle mass. They jump rope, work on the cardio machines and lift free weights.

For the remaining 90 minutes each day, Darner and Bertram lead the students in dodgeball, relay races, obstacle courses, variations on football, climbing-wall activities and scooter games.

There are smiles all around - and plenty of sweat-soaked T-shirts.

"We trick them into working on their cardio," Darner confessed.

It's producing results.

Each year, he has tracked significant drops in body fat and blood pressure as well as gains in fitness level for each student. The first year, he said his students tracked a 100 percent decrease in blood pressure and a 90 percent decrease in body fat.

Darner is expanding the concept to include the school year. For the full month of April this year, 100 Evergreen Junior High students regularly took part in a scaled-down after-school version of the Fitness Team program.

With that level of popularity among the youths - whose fitness levels range from competitive athletes to otherwise-inactive, overweight children - Darner is optimistic about the program's future and its long-term effects.

"My biggest goal is … if they are physically fit as children, they have a much higher chance to be physically fit as adults," Darner said.

He's finding that his Fitness Team discussions of nutrition and career options enhance his school-year P.E. program and the school's athletic program. It follows, he added, that academics will improve.

But the summer program on its own is entirely worth his effort.

"What we like about the program - it's so unique - we can get kids interested in improving their fitness level and devoting their summer to it," Darner said.

And with what he pointed out as a "physically out-of-shape nation," early awareness about fitness is critical to a satisfying, productive life.

"If your health isn't good," Darner said, "no other part of your life is good."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com.