School fitness centers open to community

By KAYLA BUNGE

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Photo

Photo by Dan Lassiter

Doug Meyers with Bayshore Electric of Williams Bay, installs floor outlet for treadmills in the new fitness center at Bigfoot High School. This is the expanded section of the center that doubles the space of the old one.

Photo

Photo by Dan Lassiter

The original fitness center at Bigfoot High School is currently cramped with old and new exercise equipment that will be housed in the old room and a new room that doubles the space at the facility.

WALWORTH — For many years, people who lived in the Big Foot School District had to travel to Delavan, Elkhorn or Lake Geneva to exercise at a health club.

But for the last several years, they've been able to use the fitness center at the high school without paying a monthly membership fee.

And by next week, they'll have twice as many treadmills, elliptical trainers, stationary bikes, weight machines and free weights to help them stay fit.

The fitness center at Big Foot High School is filling a big need in the community, and it's been used so heavily by students, staff and community members that it was time to expand, said Chuck Thiesenhusen, recreation director.

The expansion, which will increase the fitness center from 1,400 square feet to 3,100 square feet, is expected to be complete by Memorial Day, he said.

Voters in November 1998 approved a referendum to significantly renovate the high school. Improvements included classroom space, a gym and a fitness center.

Community members expressed interest in using the fitness center, and the school district in 2002 created a community recreation program to fill a gap in such opportunities for local kids and adults, Thiesenhusen said.

The fitness center is free for district residents to use and fairly inexpensive for non-residents. It's open for a few hours in the morning, a few hours in the evening and a few hours over the weekend. It offers a variety of equipment including treadmills, stationary bikes and free weights, and the adjacent gym is open for basketball, volleyball and soccer.

Thiesenhusen said the fitness center was used more than 14,000 times last year—and that doesn't include student use during physical education classes or after-school athletics.

"That's a tremendous amount," he said.

The fitness center is designed to comfortably accommodate about 15 people at a time, but often 20 to 25 people are there at a time, Thiesenhusen said.

"It's gotten pretty crowded," he said.

Thiesenhusen anticipates even more people to use the fitness center when the expansion is complete.

"The fitness center basically has been operating at maximum capacity for the last five years," he said. "...and it's been clear that what has prevented greater usage is the availability of equipment."

Giving back

Badger High School in Lake Geneva also has a fitness center that is open to the community.

The 8,000-square-foot fitness center opened in early March.

Voters in September 2006 approved a referendum to put an addition onto the high school that included classrooms, a visual arts wing and a fitness center.

The fitness center is primarily for physical education classes and athletics, but the district chose to open it to the community as a show of appreciation for their support of the referendum, District Administrator Jim Gottinger said.

"It's kind of been the culture here to, as much as possible, open our facilities to the public," he said. "The community obviously passes referendums ... and if they support us, we're going to find a way for them to access (our facilities) as much as possible."

Gottinger said the district is in a "trial period" with the fitness center.

It's open for a few hours in the evening three nights a week and for a few hours in the morning on weekends. But it will close when school lets out in June.

Gottinger said the school board soon will use data collected over the past three months to evaluate if the fitness center should remain open to the community.

"We need to provide several proposals, and they should run the gamut, from ‘no we shouldn't do this' to ‘yes, we might want to do more,'" he said. "But all of those options haven't been explored yet."

Taking away

While the fitness centers at Big Foot and Badger high schools might be filling a need in the community, at least one nearby health club is worried they're actually snatching up members.

Joe Peyer, executive director of the Geneva Lakes YMCA, said the schools have got their hands in something they shouldn't.

"To me, if the community is already out there, and we have a good presence of fitness and health clubs, I don't know why the schools are messing with it," he said.

Peyer said the membership fees at the school fitness centers (free for district residents and $15 or $20 a month for non-residents) are attractive compared with the rates at the YMCA, where a membership is more than $30 a month.

"It's drawing people away," he said.

Peyer declined to comment further about the relationship between the school fitness centers and the YMCA.

"It's a tough issue for me," he said.

But school officials don't believe they're doing any harm by opening their facilities to the community.

"It's not meant to make a profit," Thiesenhusen said of the school-based fitness centers. "It's meant to serve the community."

Gottinger agrees.

"We don't see this as a health club, and we're not trying to be a health club," he said. "But if we can plant the seed in people to get healthy ... hopefully they'll continue when we aren't open and exercise on their own or join a health club. We just want to bring people in who want to get a start on their fitness."