Alamogordo Public Schools Celebrates Physical Education & Sports Week, A Look Back in Alamogordo History

As Alamogordo Public Schools celebrates National Physical Education and Sports Week, AlamogordoTownNews.org looks back at the history of physical education as a part of the formal curriculum. The 1960's was a turning point in Alamogordo in establishing a formal PE curriculum. Coach Bob Sepulveda and a group of educators and coaches were invited to join APS in the 1960s to establish a formalized PE curriculum. Alamogordo Public Schools ranked as one of the top 10 best public school systems in the nation in the 60s. Paid more than most and recuited the best teachers from California, Colorado and New York at the time. Coach Sepulveda was brought to Alamogordo with a mission to go school to school and transition play ground time to a formal physical education program and that propelled him into creating a program that was a model for other school systems around the state and nation.

The catalyst to launch this program in Alamogordo and eventually around the nation, was propelled by the influence of the military, at the time, and by orders of President Kennedy.

According to Joel P. Rhodes, a Professor in the History Department of Southeast Missouri State University...

"President John Kennedy’s inability to move congress on one his signature issues – massive federal aid to education – indirectly led JFK to embrace The President’s Council on Physical Fitness, a program educating the nation’s children while making kids stakeholders in his vision of a New Frontier.

What began as a modest, and largely forgettable, Eisenhower initiative to close a fitness gap between affluent – meaning flabby – American children and their more Spartan – meaning muscular – communist counterparts in the Soviet Union, Kennedy made it unquestionably his own within weeks of taking office. The president’s more hands-on approach, plus consistent public identification with the council’s mission, breathed life into this physical education effort while at the same time further reinforcing his popular association with youthful athleticism.

Without the power to actually mandate a national exercise program, the President’s Council instead created a well-rounded curriculum which supplemented existing Physical Education in schools and the usual sports activities of youth organizations like the YMCA. Beginning in the 1961-1962 school years, the Kennedy council launched an extensive national publicity campaign promoting its fitness directives which included the president’s Marine-inspired, fifty-mile-hike-in-twenty-hour challenge, along with a number of memorable popular culture tie-ins.

Cartoonist Charles Schulz contributed “Snoopy’s Daily Dozen,” an exercise manual featuring Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang.

And then there was The Music Man composer Meredith Willson’s ubiquitous 1962 workout classic, the “Youth Fitness Song” (known to this generation as “Chicken Fat”). For untold millions of young athletes wearing canvass PF Flyers sneakers (known to later generations as Chuck Taylors), “Chicken Fat” – sung by Harold Hill himself, Robert Preston – echoed through cavernous gymnasiums via tinny public address systems to become the enduring soundtrack of grade school soft ball tosses and jumping jacks. “Push up. Every morning. Ten times! Once more on the rise,” Preston’s infectious Broadway-style cadence went, “Nuts to the flabby guys! Go, you chicken fat, go away!”

Youthful enthusiasm and broad buy-in generated by the President’s Council were childhood’s answer to Kennedy’s grander challenges: asking what you can do for your country, paying any price, bearing any burden, supporting any friend, and opposing any foe."

For junior citizens with limited means to wage Cold War, determined adherence to these prescriptive measures can be appreciated as a sort of sweat equity.

Thousands of children wrote Kennedy, keeping him abreast of their fitness regiments.

Back to Alamogordo, Coach Bob Sepulveda and his assisting coaches would go school to school and work with faculty and administrators and implement a formal PE program based upon the presidential blueprint outlined in the presidents council on physical fitness.

The reality is Alamogordo Public Schools since its founding, it assumed a role of state leadership in competive sports clubs.   

Alamogordo, New Mexico Public Schools Was an Early Interscholastic Sport Program Adoptee

Alamogordo High School began an organized sports program in 1912 for Caucasian boys offering PE, Track & Field and Basketball and Football. It integrated sports programs with Hispanic kids in thr mid 1940s, and African American kids in 1950. 

Beginning in 1913, the authorities of the University of New Mexico believing that one of the great needs of the High Schools of the state was an opportunity to meet, at least once a year in athletic and other contests, organized the University of New Mexico Track Athletic Association. A track meet was held in the spring of that year at Albuquerque, and two high schools, Santa Fe and Albuquerque contested for the banner.

Although the beginning was small, a great deal of interest from across the state was aroused.

Alamogordo High School first competed snd won its first state athletic medals in 1916/17 School Year.

The wins were in Track and Field via the High Jump and the Triple Jump. The system also sent a debate team to compete as that was considered a sport at the time. Alamogordo's sports program from 1916 forward grew and set the standard for the state. 

By the 1960's the logical next step was to implement a curriculum of physical education per the Kennedy mandate. Educators, such Coach Bob Sepulveda took the bull by the horns implementing curriculum, upgrading facilities, launching the state of the art track and field, and creating a legacy of one of the winningest programs in state competitions. 

By the early 70's, with title 9 requiring equal funding for women sports, Coaches such a Marilyn Sepulveda (First State President of Track and Field Coaches Association) , Debbie Scott (Alamogordo graduate and First Womens State Champion Volleyball) and others, girls entered into the fold of formal physical education programs and formal competition.

On the back of that history, beginning in 1916, expanding to the 1960s and 70s, under the foundational influence of the Coaches, Rolla Buck of the 50s, the Sepulveda's from the 60s thru 90s, the sports and physical education programs of today exists.

This weekend Alamogordo Sports will again make history sending competitors to Albuquerque to compete in state competitions in track and field, golf and more. 

Stay tuned to see the success comtinue...

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