Middle School Spartans Are Virtually Unstoppable

10/19/2020

On the last Saturday in September, members of the Austin Interscholastic Parochial League (AIPL) participated in the first of a number of virtual athletic competitions designed to show our young student-athletes that they are “virtually unstoppable.”

For the first AIPL Virtually Unstoppable Competition, coaches, students and their families from the seven middle schools in the league were invited to walk, run or bike outside to accumulate and then post their activity miles. “Since kids are in front of screens all day, the goal was to get them out and active, families included,” explained Kathy Coe, Middle School athletic director. “We decided to make it a competition and try to get as many people as active as possible.

“We have planned competitions for volleyball and football as well,” Coe added. “The kids in those programs will go through a series of skill challenges in their sport. Football players, for example, will participate in passing and kicking skills, while volleyball players will participate in serving and passing skills. We will tally their participation scores and post team and individual stats on the AIPL website. The goal is to give kids something to look forward to and a reason to work on improving their skills in these sports since we are unable to have a regular competitive season this fall.”

Coe is thrilled that St. Stephen’s Middle School students have been so excited about accumulating activity miles and posting their scores to share with others. “It is crucial for kids to engage in physical activity, especially in this time of a global pandemic, when everyone needs to stay physically distant,” she noted. “Being isolated can cause all kinds of harmful consequences, and being stationary all day can cause obesity and other health concerns. It's important for our students to be outside, getting Vitamin D from the sun and moving!”

So how did our Spartans do in the first virtual competition? “We had an epic 78 participants in the Virtually Unstoppable Challenge,” Coe said. “We almost doubled the participation of other local schools. St. Stephen’s students accumulated 178.8 miles biking and 263 miles running/walking for an average of 9.03 points per person!”

Coe credits the Middle School coaches and trainers with getting students excited about sports during the pandemic. “They have been amazingly flexible and enthusiastic with our students even though they are being asked to coach remotely and balance more than one thing at a time,” Coe noted. “They manage both in-person practices and remote practices that happen simultaneously. I think their biggest challenges have been remaining flexible and communicating the many protocol and schedule changes that occur almost daily. But our coaches have been amazing, and I think our kids are just happy to be outside playing.

“There are many life lessons to learn through sport, and I hope that we are able to help our student athletes learn them along their journey,” Coe concluded.

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