Don’t like mainstream sports or don’t have time to play any? Looking for something new and different? Maybe you just don’t want to be on a team? Well these sports for the unsporty might be for you!
Physical fitness is a great life-long habit, which is one of the reasons Sequoyah requires it. For those who don’t want to take part in one of the school’s teams, Sequoyah offers “Independent PE,” which allows you to do many different kinds of activities! So some Sequoyah students are designing their own physical education programs. There are no limits to what you could do: rock climbing, ballet, rowing, skateboarding, parkour, fencing, weight lifting, horseback riding, trapeze, chessboxing, or whatever else takes your fancy.
Some activities that students have chosen include karate, bodybuilding, and even Just Dance (a video game about just… well, dancing). GMC has caught up with Adrian Arida ’25, Mateo Rodriguez ’25, and Farrah Mackenzie ’24 to explore their experiences with Independent PE.
Arida practices karate twice a week for an hour, working with a coach. They’ve “never been a fan of any sport, ever.” They’ve tried basketball and soccer and other sports that “mostly involve running, which is a thing that [they] really can’t do very well.” Arida notes that the Sequoyah Independent PE program has motivated them to go out and get exercise: “If I didn’t need PE credit I would not be doing any PE.”
Rodriguez does “a combination of different things” including biking on weekends, walking a loop around a cemetery, and playing physical video games. Rodriguez expressed that “the commitment to a sports team certain days after school just doesn’t always work with my schedule and it takes up a lot of time.” Independent PE, on the other hand, lets him get credit for activities that he enjoys and would probably be doing anyway. For example, he loves thrift stores “so [he’ll] just bike to Goodwill and that will be [his] incentive to exercise…and go look at interesting things.”
Mackenzie admits that she would “probably not” be getting much exercise without the Independent PE program. She is planning to do a series of online workout videos that she describes as “a daily routine and there’s rest days and a diet plan and they’re 10-30 minutes each.” This is an attractive option because “if [she] was doing sports [she] would have way less time to do homework.”
Overall, Independent PE has positively impacted students who are not interested in most sports or don’t have time for Sequoyah’s sports schedule. The program offers many opportunities for different, creative options! If you want to know more about Independent PE, click ATHLETICS on the resource page of the portal and scroll to the bottom for information about how to sign up!
