Grant Will Have Students Jumping Rope for fitness

Sometimes magic happens with the simple combination of an idea and an opportunity.

Over four hundred jump ropes, soon to be in the hands of Cascade School District students for use at home and back at school, happened just that way.

Brett Johnson, Cascade School District Special Education Director, has applied for grants with the Northwest Foundation for Youth in the past, always with the idea to help students stay active.

Recently, after consulting with the district P.E. teachers, Micah Rieke, Paul Fraker and Paula West, he applied for and received a $1000 grant, which pays for jump ropes to be used by P.E. classes in third through twelfth grade.

Rieke thinks he’ll be able to seamlessly add jump ropes, which can be loaned out, to his IRMS P.E. curriculum. Right now, he assigns his students to be physically active twice a week, and parents must sign that activities were completed, or students can submit short videos of their exercise. Often Rieke makes his own instructional videos for students to follow along, but there’s a degree of free choice so long as they are moving and outside in nature.

“I haven’t typically used jump ropes, but with remote learning, this is another tool to get kids to exercise,” he said. During virtual learning, sport skills and strategies might be harder to teach, but Rieke can make sure students understand fitness fundamentals. He’s already taught students about resting and aerobic heart rates and how they should try to be in their aerobic zone some of the time. Once jump ropes are in hand, that aerobic threshold will be easy to reach.

“Beyond fitness, jump ropes help with footwork, speed and agility,” Rieke noted. These abilities come in handy for numerous other sports.

The jump ropes come from a local company, www.buyjumpropes.net, owned by Matt and Lennea Hopkins. Matt was a former P.E. teacher in the district, and both served as competitive jump rope coaches.

“We coached a competitive team, the Mountain Jumpers, for ten years and invented a jump rope which started a new business for us,” Matt Hopkins explained. “We’ve grown from a small home business to a medium-size business of 25 employees. We have recently expanded and work out of a large warehouse in Wenatchee.”

Rieke said, “I hope to pick Matt’s brain on developing a good progression.” The P.E. teachers will also be able to use Hopkins’ website as a resource, as it has videos for beginners to experts.

One ten-minute video on the site, featuring local and former world jump rope champion Heather Butler, shows how to gradually add difficulty to a jumping routine, adding moves like skier jumps, which go side to side, scissor jumps, which alternate legs front to back, and single foot jumps.

The jump ropes will arrive soon, as colder weather is setting in. While snow play and snow sports are great activities for kids, jump roping can serve as an easy indoor alternative. The students will be able challenge themselves to learn techniques and tricks, with a side benefit of fitness and endurance.