The roar of applause inside the JAG Fieldhouse was deafening as students from James A Garfield Elementary School and Middle School welcomed Lt. Governor Jim Tressel. The five-time collegiate national football champion visited Garfield to promote the Team Tressel Fitness Challenge last Thursday in Garrettsville.
“It was just great to be here,” Tressel told The Weekly Villager. “I have always known the reputation of the school. It is a great academic school, they care about their kids, and they jumped right into the program. They really grabbed onto the challenge and just think we have 655,000 students statewide, just think if you got 20% of the kids buying in.”
Tressel, who won four national championships while serving as the head coach of Youngstown State University and one while coaching at The Ohio State University, has embarked on a statewide tour to introduce young Ohioans to the Team Tressel Fitness Challenge, a student-led initiative designed to challenge students to build healthy habits at a young age. The Team Tressel Fitness Challenge is open to all young Ohio students, starting from third grade to eighth grade.
Tressel and his team visited the JAG School District to encourage the students to take part in the challenge with a special assembly. He began the assembly by showing an introductory video, explaining the purpose of the Team Tressel Fitness Challenge.
The video delivered the message that it was the students’ choice to keep moving, keep going and keep being better than they were the day before.
Each student received a special handbook, filled with challenges that they could participate in to better themselves. The handbook consisted of three separate levels of challenges; by completing each challenge, the student achieves a bronze, silver, or gold level status.
Tressel told the audience that the Team Tressel Fitness Challenge was created after Ohio Governor Mike DeWine expressed an interest in having a statewide initiative that would encourage young students to get fit.
“With the advice from the Ohio Department of Health, we have given you choices of what you can pick from to challenge yourselves,” he added. “After you reach these goals, set them higher.”
Tressel added that all the different activities will help the students to develop healthy habits.
“All different activities will help build a better life, help you be a better friend, sibling, and help you reach your goals,” he noted.
Tressel enlisted the assistance of a former OSU offensive tackle Mike Adams, who played professionally primarily for the Pittsburgh Steelers, to demonstrate some of the physical activities that the students can participate in if they elect to join the Team Tressel Fitness Challenge.
Adams was joined by student-athletes from Kent State University and student volunteers from the JAG School District, to demonstrate these exercises.
Adams, the KSU student-athletes and JAG student volunteers performed several exercises, including running in place, push-ups, lower body exercises, and core exercises.
University Hospitals’ Pediatric Sports Dr. Amanda Weiss Kelley gave a brief presentation to the audience, educating students about nutritional and sleeping habits.
Tressel encouraged the students to use the Team Tressel Fitness Challenge to not only challenge themselves but challenge their families as well.
He informed the students that the Challenge did not just require physical conditioning but included mental conditioning.
He concluded the special assembly by presenting the JAG School District with a Wilson Champion Football, officially designating the District as a Wilson Champion, making the JAG School District just the sixth one out of 200 schools he has visited across the State of Ohio to receive the distinguished honor.
Tressel told The Villager that the students’ enthusiasm and excitement made the JAG School District a perfect recipient of the honor.
“It means you have totally embraced all parts of the challenge, the fitness, the nutrition, the sleep, the attitude of gratitude, the encouraging of each other, the helping each other and working out with each other,” he said. “If you have embraced it, we can tell; they have embraced it.”
For Tressel, although his football coaching career is now over, he expressed excitement about still being involved in physical fitness at lower school levels.
“I went to college to be an educator,” he said. “I was in higher education for 48 years. I wrote my master’s thesis in 1977 on the effect of physical activity on your mental, psychological, social and physical psychosocial selves. I believed it back then and I believe it even more now.”
