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To help Nodaway Valley’s athletes in their quest to become bigger, faster and stronger individuals in all ways, the school’s activities department benefited from a donation recently from the Nodaway Valley Booster Club that allowed the school to boost its weight room.
While no additions were made to the structure, which sits on the northwest side of the high school in Greenfield, heavy additions were made to the amount of equipment the room has. It was also rearranged to maximize the space. These changes were first in use on Thursday.
“The way we’ve been structuring our strength and conditioning program, last year we had three sessions and this year we’ve gone down to two sessions. We’re cycling 60 kids through the weight room in that first session to get them in and out of there,” Dale said. “We’ve doubled the capacity of our weightlifting racks and have completely changed the layout of our weight room to make it more functional. I’ve gotta give a lot of credit to our high school booster club. We put in the request, were able to show them the increased use from last year to this year and the trouble we had doing that with the amount of equipment we had, and our booster club stepped up.”
Dale says that through the added equipment, he and the coaches are able to stick to a commitment he’s set forth this summer through the entire department to lessen the burden slightly on student athletes.
“As an activities department, we’ve tried to be more conscious of our kids’ time in the summer, working together as coaches to not double schedule. It’s frustrating for our summer coaches because those are the only coaches whose in season is everyone else’s out of season,” Dale said. “If you’re the basketball coach, during the summer, you can have as much contact with the kids as you want. In the fall and springtime, you can’t have any direct coaching contact with those kids. To try and not burn our kids out and try to grow our programs, we wanted to be very conscious of how much time we take out of their day. Our focus this year has really been on getting our kids in in the morning and make sure all of our kids are out of the building by 9:30 or 10. We want kids to have time to be kids or to go home and rest before their softball or baseball game that night.”
Activity shuttle
An added bonus for families who live in different communities than where their kids need to be is an activity shuttle that has begun across Nodaway Valley’s district, primarily between Fontanelle and Greenfield. The shuttle goes to Greenfield from Fontanelle in the morning so students may attend strength and conditioning sessions or any practices. After those activities are complete, it returns.
Dale says that on days that the middle school teams have home games, use of the shuttle has been higher, though it has been utilized nearly everyday. He reports that as long as the shuttle is used, it will be kept in use.
Dale said that the shuttle, which was authorized by the school board at a recent meeting, came up as a need through feedback from those in the school district.