Fat Camp Articles
Getting Physical
By Jess Clarke
Besides fitting into junior-size clothes, Chloe can do something else she never imagined before she started at Wellspring Academy of the Carolinas last August. She can play sports — and keep up with teammates. Football, basketball, she’s got game.
By December, she had cut her time running a mile from 17 minutes to 11 minutes. Her bold goal now is nine minutes. According to her friends at home, “I just have this whole different glow,” Chloe says.
Wellspring Academies in California and North Carolina offer a renowned approach to weight loss, fitness and a healthy lifestyle for children and young adults.
Many Wellspring Academies students get the same glow as Chloe from the combination of losing weight and gaining skills and competence at sports. Their competence can carry over into other areas.
“We definitely see improvement in maturity, self-confidence, performance,” says Dan Barney, director of Wellspring Academy of California. “We really see kids that do well in our program and lose weight kind of come full circle and do better in all areas of their lives. I do think part of it is weight loss, and a lot is attributable to our clinical program,” which offers individual and group counseling.
The stats at Wellspring Academy of the Carolinas are telling. Early in the first semester, football scores were 6-0 and 7-6. Later, games ended with scores of 37-32, 40-36 and 66-54. At the start, because of kids’ generally poor cardiovascular condition, physical education teacher and athletic trainer John Taylor substituted players every five minutes in football, basketball, hockey and soccer. Before semester’s end, subbing was every 15 minutes.
“Their improvement blows parents’ minds when I tell them what they’re doing,” Taylor says. “These kids receive more one-on-one instruction than they ever would in school” elsewhere. “I think (students) see we’re trying to help them get better.”
Students, who take skills tests, learn the fundamentals of kicking, throwing and catching. In addition to a skills class, they play team sports every day and do aerobic exercise and weight training in the gym four days a week. The tests and championships in each sport help motivate students.
Outside English and health teacher Katie Busch’s classroom, Taylor posts a stat sheet with information about students’ sports accomplishments. “I hear the students saying, ‘I have to go check the stats. I might be number one in home runs or touchdowns.’ They’re really excited about it, and I would have a hard time imagining they’d have similar success at their home school,” Busch says.
Part of the aim is to encourage kids to find a sport they enjoy enough to pursue after they leave Wellspring. “I’m a big believer that if kids don’t become competent at sports they do while they’re at Wellspring, there’s no way they’ll do it once they go home,” Taylor says. Students tell him they plan to continue basketball, hockey, tennis, weight-training and other activities.
At 6 feet 1 inch tall, Chandler, 14, says she’s motivated to pursue basketball — or acting. Staying active mentally and physically has helped her. “There’s something to do all the time,” she says. “I never thought I’d be happy. I was always depressed. Now I’m content with myself.”
Her brother, Adam, 17, is so accustomed now to the physical activity at Wellspring that he says video games bore him. As with his sister, basketball is one of his favorite sports to play.
At Wellspring Academy in California, some students play in off-campus, community sports leagues and compete in community runs. “It gives them the knowledge and confidence to go out and do that in their community when they go home,” Barney says.
With improved competence at sports, “They find out what’s working for them and find out that having a bad attitude or being reclusive or having some negative behaviors, that’s not getting them what they really want. They want positive attention,” Barney says. “It feels a whole lot better than consequences and things like that.”
A student at Wellspring Academy in North Carolina got his share of positive attention recently when he, the team’s sole scorer, put away 40 points in a basketball game on campus. The student, who started the season shooting the ball from between his legs, led his team to win the game by three points. Taylor told him, “For the rest of your life, you can always remember that you put that team on your back, and you carried them… and because of you your team won.”
“This is an experience he can draw from, putting forth maximum effort,” says Taylor, who talked with the student about applying the principle to academics.
Chloe’s maximum effort in team sports has carried over into her equestrian endeavors. She rides her Irish warmblood, Flannigan, two days a week. When she started at Wellspring, the pair did jumps of 2 feet over crates and barrels. Before semester’s end, they were clearing jumps of nearly 3 1/2 feet.
Chloe explains the improvement this way: “Losing weight has made me gain confidence in myself,” she says. “I started believing in myself more. If I stay confident in myself, it makes (Flannigan) more confident.”
Wellspring weight loss programs offer year-round boarding schools In California and North Carolina, and summer weight loss camps throughout the United States, as well as in the UK, Canada, and Australia
