After-school program keeps students active
Students who volunteer for the P.A.C.E. Setters program at West Madison Elementary say they participate in the program in order to stay physically fit.
Students at West Madison Elementary School are pacing themselves.
They are participating in Physically Active Children Excelling, or P.A.C.E. Setters, a voluntary after-school running program aimed at keeping students at the school active and in shape.
The 2010 program kicked off Tuesday, Oct. 5, at the school, located on Wall-Triana Hwy.
For the next six weeks, students will spend 50 minutes running and walking around the school’s track and learning different ways to stay healthy.
“We’ve had a lot of interest in the program this year,” said P.E. teacher and club founder Joy Brindley. “We were kind of surprised at how many students wanted to do it. We ended up accepting 100 students this year, which is good because that’s 25 percent of the students in the school participating. It has become very successful.”
Jonathon Stuart, a sixth-grader in the club, said he joined P.A.C.E. Setters to become more physically fit.
“I’m not that good at running, so I am here to get better,” Stuart said.
Tyler Coombs, another sixth-grader and an athlete, said he joined the club as a way to prepare for the upcoming athletic season.
“This is a great way for me to build endurance to play soccer,” Coombs said, “and it’s another fun thing to do with my friends.”
Before the run, students meet in the gym for warm-up exercises and a guest speaker gives tips and advice on health and wellness.
“The kids accumulate as much mileage on the tracks as possible in the amount of time that’s given to them,” Brindley said. “We’ve organized that third through six-grade students can run outside of the school track like in cross county, with parent volunteers.”
Brindley said she had to set strict entry guidelines this year to keep the number of students in the program down. She said she would like to allow more students to participate, but she would need more parent and teacher volunteers to ensure students’ safety.
“I was amazed that so many kids wanted to do this,” she said. “I thought if it were maybe soccer or playing a sport, it would be different, but I was really impressed that so many kids wanted to run and walk.”
Brindley said the school provides a safe place for students to congregate outside, while also providing the element of safety.
“This, for sure, gives them a place to be active and the camaraderie of being all together,”Brindley said. “With both parents and teachers involved, it’s a community effort.”
She said the students are given incentives for their participation in the program such as awards day, certificates for top mileage in each grade and toe tokens.
“The kids get to come up and pick a toe token that we give away for every 2 miles they run,” she said.
The next meeting will be Tuesday afternoon at 2:40 p.m. at West Madison.
