Running in circles

Graham A. Barden Elementary School students can now run around in a dry circle instead of muddy oval.

Students and administrators dedicated a new three-lane, paved track Tuesday afternoon at the Havelock school.

“It looks a lot better than the old one,” said third-grader Xavier Santana, 8. “It’s nice and smooth, and I like the track lanes so you can race.”

A $10,000 grant from the N.C. Health and Wellness Trust Fund and $1,000 each from the Cherry Point Officers Spouses Club, East Carolina A+ Fit, and Wal-mart paid for the eighth-mile track.

Hardy Boys Paving of New Bern worked during the summer and completed the track in August.

“We did it over the summer while the children were out of school and in between monsoons,” said Julia Boss, who wrote the grant for the track. “Our kids use it every day.”

And, they seem to enjoy it.

“I like the lanes, one, two, three where you don’t have to bump into each other,” said third-grader Nicholas Simms, 8.

The old track was basically a dirt path.

“Last year when it rained, all the mud got all over the track and we had to run on the side,” said fifth-grader Khelsy Barber, 11.

“This year even if it rains we can still walk on it and we can go much faster,” said fifth-grader Elijah Green, 11.

Lorene Pfeiffer, the school’s perennial grant writer, gave credit for the project to Boss.

“She kind of took this and ran with it,” Pfeiffer said.

Kathy Crumpler, the A+ Fit school project coordinator with the trust fund, said the Havelock school is the first in the state to do this type of physical project.

She said what’s great about the track is the collaboration among the school, the community and the military, and the pairing of physical education and healthy eating.

In a library reception, students had constructed vegetable faces made of healthy foods like pineapple, squash, eggplant and cabbage and decorated with limes, radishes, mushrooms, apples, carrots and grapes and even green peppers.

“That kind of collaboration is hard to get,” Crumpler said. “It makes it sustainable because they have so much support.”

Marines from Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron at Cherry Point, who have already adopted the school, are volunteering and helping students walk around the track.

Principal Joan Bjork quoted President John F. Kennedy, who said “Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.”

Larry Moser, Craven County School superintendent, attended the dedication, calling it “a historic day not only for Graham Barden Elementary but also for the community.”

Two benches along the track were also dedicated, one with a plaque honoring the contributors, and the other honoring teacher Marcia Stuart “for all the years you have kept the children healthy.”

Afterward, Stuart led students for a trip around the track. At the end they all gathered around her, thrust their arms into the air and shouted “One, two, three, beautiful!”