MAKING A MOUNTAIN

Salmon High School

---

SALMON, Idaho—Outside Salmon High School, county trucks are dumping riprap and other materials from their spring clean-up in a huge pile. Soon 1,000 cubic yards of fill from the excavations for an apartment building will be dumped on top of that. Then a landscape architecture class at the school will install a sprinkler system and a rope tow. The aspen and pine trees they plant will be the finishing touch on Salmon High's very own 30-foot tall mountain.

The mountain is the brainchild of Zane Abbott and the PE department of which he has been a part for the last 21 years. It will be an all-purpose training hill, with a jogging course, used also for varsity sports conditioning, Nordic skiing, golf, and field archery. As a bonus, terracing will make one side into an amphitheater, providing the school with its first auditorium.

The mountain is an outgrowth of Abbott's longtime emphasis on lifetime sports. It's a calling that has taken him all over the county, sharing with students the many recreational opportunities Idaho provides.

PE was not always like this at Salmon High. Before Abbott arrived, gym class was pretty much the way he found it when he was a student himself. "The coach threw the ball out, and the kids played," is how he remembers it. Inspired by an article he'd read years earlier about programs that taught lifetime sports, Abbott began to initiate some changes when he was hired.

Now the school offers three PE classes. The first course, for sophomores, is Beginning Lifetime Sports. In autumn, students take snorkeling, skin diving, archery, and Pickle-Ball (a hybrid of table tennis, tennis, and badminton played with a wooden paddle). In winter, they try skating (ice, speed, and figure), hockey, badminton, alpine skiing, snowboarding, and, in their recreational skills segment, bowling, juggling, line dancing, Frisbee, and yo-yo. The course is completed in the spring with hiking, backpacking, orienteering, spin-and-bait casting, tennis, golf, and horseshoes. "With horseshoes, the state finals competition is held each year in one of our city parks, where we have a large facility," says Abbott. "We bus our kids there to have the old-timers give them tips."

Amid all the activity, Abbott also teaches his students about "wellness lifestyles," including nutrition, the effects of aging, and the specific benefits of exercise. Abbott writes a question on the blackboard every day, and gives out the answer the following day. Students are trained to figure out their heart rates and understand what their goal should be during exercise.

An elective class entitled Advanced Lifetime Sports follows. In the fall, this consists of white-water kayaking (in which students are sometimes bused to the area's rivers), bow-hunter education, and advanced field archery. In the winter, students learn Nordic skiing and snowboarding. The spring unit features climbing on a newly built rock wall (which, for a cost of $4,000, was paid for entirely by renting advertising space to local businesses). The unit also includes fly-fishing and rod building, along with knot- and fly-tying. "We have a nonconsumption permit with the state fish and wildlife department to catch and release fish," says Abbott. "We often get officials from the department to come talk to us about conservation at the same time." Mountain biking is also offered.

The final elective available is Coed Strength and Conditioning, taken by all kinds of students. This is broken down into three sections: hypertrophic lifting, in which students use light weights and many repetitions with many muscles; basic strength training, which involves heavier weights with fewer repetitions; and Olympics-style power lifting.

If popularity is any indication of success, Abbott's approach is a winner. The Strength and Conditioning Class is in such demand that students win a slot only through a randomized computer drawing. Although only one PE class is required, more than half of the student body is taking PE classes at any given point. Students clamor for more. When their mountain is finished this spring, students will have even more opportunities to get hooked for life on sports Idaho offers year-round.

Respond to this article