America is obese, at least that's what I've been told. I believe America isn't obese just overweight and I think we could fix this starting with the kids. Kids who exercise are healthier than kids who don't so it would make sense that for kids to live a healthier lifestyle and to avoid becoming overweight we get them to exercise. Exercise comes in many forms; in high school it is most common through sports.
Teams have cuts taking away some kids opportunities to exercise. Middle school had inter mural basketball all through the winter for kids who couldn't make it on the team or just didn't have the time to commit to the sport. I propose that we bring inter mural basketball and other inter mural sports to the high school. Practice for basketball and cheerleading take place all the time and there is no time for inter mural sports, what needs to be done is a new gym should be built. A gym as a separate building positioned at the end of the student parking lot which is never used anyways because we don't have the amount of cars needed to fill the lot. In this new gym there would be a pool on the ground floor and a gym on the top, this way practices can get done sooner because of the two gyms and inter mural sports would get more kids exercising and staying healthy. Sport practices would also benefit as they have two gyms to utilize, earlier practices gives kids more time to go home and get homework done rather than be distracted by their friends. The pool would be a great idea because the school already pays the YMCA a large amount to swim in their pool for the season and we get the short end of the stick. Practices at 8:15 to 9:00 are ridiculous, if we had our own pool we could have prime practice time and we could charge Waterville and Winslow to use the pool which they would love to do rather than swim at late times. The lifeguard on duty would be employed by the parks and recreation and we would have an hour of open swim every day for kids who may not want to swim on the team but do laps every once in a while, just opening up possibilities for kids to get exercise. Previous years the school has hosted inter mural sports during the spring and fall with ultimate frisbee and softball, last year and so far this year there have been no inter mural sports. The want is out there for inter mural sports, a group of kids started an ultimate frisbee federation over the summer to play and it went rather successfully.
A new gym at the end of the parking lot would open opportunities for kids to get exercise. A place to play basketball would also keep kids out of trouble because they wouldn't have time to do bad things. The 1st floor pool would be great because the surrounding high schools would have a reasonable time to practice, there could be inter mural waterpolo and many other possibilities including lap swim for those who don't feel like running some days.
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