While developing the Jack’s Pack program, Coach Del Rio learned that the military children attending Duval public schools rank lowest in the nation in physical fitness (bottom 2%) as measured on the President’s Challenge Physical Fitness Test. There are multiple reasons for this, such as a lack of access to fitness equipment or teams, the constant relocation of families to new cities, the costs associated with participating in athletics and/or the lack of time to devote due to parental deployments. Because of this worrisome statistic and the implications to the health of our military children, the Jack Del Rio Foundation has created the “Ready, Sweat, Go!” program.

Working in conjunction with the National Football League’s physical fitness program, NFL Play60, Coach Del Rio and his Foundation, along with the Naval Station Mayport leadership and Jacksonville Jaguar players and staff, have taken an active role in teaching and encouraging the children on base to be physically active. Teaching our youth to be active and healthy today sets them up to enjoy good health going into their adulthood and, hopefully, throughout their lives.

To kickoff this initiative, the JDRF and some Jacksonville Jaguar players visited N.S. Mayport and their Youth Activities Center to interact with and demonstrate to the children on base how to be physically active. The kids were taught the appropriate ways to do sit-ups, push-ups, jump rope and other activities which are part of the Physical Fitness Test. For the short term, the goal of the program is to encourage these children to participate in at least 60 minutes of physical activity every day. To help promote this idea and, hopefully have it adopted into their everyday lives, the kids have been issued the challenge to take and pass the President’s Challenge Physical Fitness Test in March 2011. The long term goal is to help instill in each child the philosophy of a healthy lifestyle that they will continue into adulthood and throughout their lives.