With the help of Olympians and Paralympians, Ready, Set, Gold inspires kids in Southern California schools to adopt healthy lifestyles.
By Heather Newgen
To help students prepare for healthy lifestyles, Ready, Set, Gold teams up with Olympians and Paralympians who visit SoCal schools to share their stories, workout with kids and help motivate them to stay physically active. The program was founded in 1988, "Ready, Set, Gold was actually spawn from a failed Olympic bid, but it was such a great concept and vision that sponsors gravitated towards it," President & CEO of the LA Sports Council and Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games, David Siegel said.
He continued, "And the program has been going on for 14 years. We put Olympians and Paralympians into SoCal area schools and the whole idea is olympians and paralympians demonstrate a proven track record for overcoming adversity and obstacles to achieve their dreams and our program. We’re a between the bell program. We’re not an after school program. Each lesson includes not only a fitness element, but a growth mindset element in which the athlete shares a personal story and that could be setting and achieving personal goals and fitness goals. Growth mindset is what we’re looking to get for the kids. There’s not another program like it in the world. It offers a very special opportunity for students to connect and work with these olympic champions to create enduring bonds and demonstrate that hard work leads to long term physical and well being and personal achievement. 84% of those schools are underscored schools in those title 1 communities."
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Like everything else, Ready, Set, Gold had to readjust their program due to Covid, but as a result, they've been able to reach more kids, Usually, the program operates in five school districts at 72 schools, serving almost 10,000 students in person to date.
However, the pandemic forced Ready, Set, Gold to go virtual. Launching in the fall of 2020, Ready, Set, Gold successfully hosted an eight-week series of 30 minute videos with a spring semester that just launched running from March 1-April 26. A new video will drop every Monday (minus March 29) showcasing a workout that's free for children of all ages with one of its 40 current athletes on its rapidly growing roster. To date, Ready, Set, Gold has helped 15,000 children stay active while school has been closed, though they've decided to keep this element of their program going when schools reopen.
"It’s really enabled us to scale the program in a way that we didn’t dream possible for many, many years. So now we actually have 2 components to our program. We’re going to have an in school when everyone gets back to normal and kids are able to go to school full-time and we’re going to continue to move forward with the virtual programming as well. The virtual component gives us the ability to scale across the country and around the world."
To show your support for Ready, Set, Gold, you can tune into this year's 16th annual LASports Awards, airing at 8pm on Spectrum SportsNet and SportsNetLA. Sports fans can bid in their silent auction where a portion of the proceeds will keep the program funded and going strong for years to come.