North Penn holds its first G.A.S. event
North Penn student Anthony Zayas climbs the rock wall during the high school's Fitness Activity Night on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012. Photo by Andy Stettler, The Reporter.
The Foundation supported this event through a Health Education Mini-Grant to North Penn High School. The Mini-Grant program aligns with the efforts of the Health Promotion Council’s WISE SNAC® Initiative to promote opportunities for students to learn about and engage in healthy eating and physical activity.
By DAN SOKIL
Towamencin - Believe it or not, hundreds of North Penn High school students spent their Thursday night in school.
And perhaps even more unbelievably, they were having fun - dancing, playing ball, or swatting at shuttlecocks as part of the school's first GAS: Games, Activities and Sports night.
"We're just trying to get as many kids out and active as possible," said North Penn Health and Physical Education teacher Jon Fluck.
“The entire department got together and decided we needed to come up with some activities to try to get as many kids out and active, and try to make them healthy for a lifetime by showing them what they can do,” he said.
For North Penn senior Josh DeJesus and junior Dylan Wallace, that meant harnessing up and climbing a rock wall usually reserved only for seniors in the Adventure Education phys-ed classes, as friends Kaitlyn Gill and Alex Landis watched and snapped the occasional cellphone picture.
“Since I’m a junior, I don’t get to take Adventure Ed yet, so this is the first chance I’ve had to go up this rock wall,” Wallace said.
“I just imagined it was like climbing a fence,” DeJesus said.
As Gill and Landis tried to talk those two into a game of ping-pong after climbing, teacher Jaimey Jones helped his fellow phys-ed teachers and student volunteers make sure each student wore the proper helmet and harness before climbing.
Jones said the GAS night name was chosen to draw interest from the students, but the department had two main goals for putting on the event.
“First, to kind of put on display some of the activities we offer at North Penn, from the Kinect — dance to the climbing wall; a lot of different activities that are away from your traditional phys ed class,” he said.
“The other thing is that we wanted to give the kids a nice, free, safe opportunity to come out and have a good time: burn some calories and have some fun,” Jones said.
Burning calories is exactly what the Kinect system is for — it’s an XBox enhancement that picks up player movement without using controllers, when used with the dancing game that drew large crowds to two XBox 360 video game consoles in auxiliary gyms.
The North Penn School District’s Educational Foundation donated the XBox Kinect system to the phys-ed department, and sophomores Jackie Hannifin, Michelle Duong, Ayushi Pola and Lauren Hankey danced for the better part of an hour to the game’s music and routines.
“You don’t have to use a controller, you just dance, let loose, just so we can have fun and get into the gyms,” Pola said.
“(Teachers) want us to be more fit because obesity is increasing in the United States, and I feel like it’s a growing concern, so I feel like we should encourage kids to exercise more,” she said.
Three of those four are on NPHS sports teams — Duong plays tennis, Pola runs cross-country and Hankey is on the swim team, but Hannifin led several of the dances and highly recommended the gaming system for anyone who wants a workout.
And in the high school’s main gym, junior Kyle Mayfield was one of dozens of students who batted a badminton shuttlecock over a net — a welcome departure, he said, from the football season that has just ended.
“I came here to have fun, pretty much, using our whole facilities, because we don’t get to use them that much because of sports,” he said.
“I thought it was a good idea, but I didn’t think anybody was going to come. I wasn’t expecting this many people,” Mayfield said.
A few nets over, seniors Matt Davey and Steve Chiang took turns playing pickleball, a combination of tennis and ping-pong, which Chiang said he doesn’t get to do often as a member of the high school’s track team.
“Our coaches told us a lot about GAS night, and since we’re athletic guys we thought we’d come out and enjoy a couple of sports,” he said.
“It’s real fun, we can play pretty much whatever you want: pickleball, badminton, basketball, dodgeball, volleyball, it’s just fun to spend a Thursday night at school hanging out,” Davey said.
Will there be another GAS night anytime soon? Jones and Fluck each said that while none are currently scheduled, they hope the high turnout is a good sign, and the proceeds from selling T-shirts that read a stylized “Got Gas?” would go toward planning another night. Those T-shirts were already sold out in large and extra large less than an hour after the doors opened.
“Attendance is great so far, but we’re hopeful there’ll be more to come, so stay tuned,” Fluck said.
From Sokil, Dan. (2012, Feb. 17). North Penn holds its first GAS event. The Reporter. Retrieved from: http://www.thereporteronline.com/article/20120217/NEWS01/120219696/north-penn-holds-its-first-gas-event&pager=full_story