PE is no longer the only elective focused on keeping students physically fit.
This year, Duncan Middle School added a weightlifting class to its elective roster. Coach Grant Givens will teach three sections of weightlifting at DMS in the mornings with the classes offered to seventh and eighth-grade students.
“I mostly joined it to get in shape.” Zara Ozaltin, a seventh-grade student, said.
Weightlifting joins PE, athletics offseason and various school sports to give students ways of remaining physically active during the school year. Other electives, such as health, also focus on healthy lifestyles for students.
The weightlifting class is one of two new electives offer to students this year with the other elective being life management, taught by Mark Monteith.
Weightlifting helps people with their own physical goals and ideas to how it can contribute to their health and the current status they may have. It also helps them become a better athlete with these helpful exercises and techniques.
Tori Garland, another seventh-grade student, said she is glad to be a part of the weightlifting class.
“To make myself a better athlete is why I joined,” Garland said.
Ozaltin and Garland said the class provides a good opportunity for students, even though it also requires hard work, forcing them to push through. But reaching goals and earning gains is what it’s all about.
And in the end, it’s all becomes about the payoff.
“It makes me work hard and put in effort,” Garland said.
The weight room was completed over the weekend. Before the equipment arrived and was put in place, students enrolled in the class were working out in the gym.
