New West Brook Fitness Center Opens

unveiled its new fitness center Monday, a space where students can use exercise equipment and lift weights.

The center, a converted storage space with five exercise bicycles, an elliptical machine, a treadmill and a rack of light dumbbells, opened to students this week.

The fitness center represents a focus on decreasing obesity and developing lifelong fitness habits, West Brook principal Carla Alvarez said. The physical education department has increasingly promoted cardiovascular health and reduced an emphasis on team sports.

"Not every kid is going to play a sport," physical education teacher Larry Goodman said.

Classes incorporating the fitness center will function like a circuit gym, with students rotating through different exercises around the gym, including a few minutes at a time in the fitness center. Goodman said the approach maximizes the space available.

The equipment in the gym was funded largely through the physical education department's sale of T-shirts, which generates a small profit each year, Alvarez said. physical education teacher Janine Teel donated one of the exercise bicycles.

The school has additional equipment on order, Alvarez said.

"We would like to eventually expand it," she said of the fitness center.

The school started carving out the storage space into a fitness center last year, Alvarez said, and there is additional room where they hope to grow the center. Plans are in place to start an after-school fitness club that makes use of the fitness center.

Though the center is still new, Goodman said students already enjoyed using it.

"They get excited about coming in here," he said.