Students from Holy Rosary High School’s Kinesiology program take part in a lab last Tuesday after the group travelled to Edmonton to tour the U of A Kin department and take in an Edmonton Oilers game. Taylor Weaver Meridian Source
Last week was an exciting one for kinesiology students at Holy Rosary High School (HRHS) as they ventured to Edmonton to learn more about the profession, as well as enjoy an Edmonton Oilers game.
Now in its fourth year, the kinesiology program at HRHS is a year-long class that makes up three different curriculums.
Upon completion of the program, students earn their Health Science 20 credit, their Phys Ed 20 credit, and their Exercise 30 credit.
“The program is set up to prepare students to go into the kinesiology field,” said Ashley Fullarton, athletic director at HRHS as well as a phys ed and kinesiology teacher.
“When students go into a lab, they have some previous knowledge with anatomy, anatomical positioning, they’ve done a dissection before, and they’re also the students that are predominantly our athletes, so they don’t like to sit at a desk all day, they like to be moving and doing things.”
During their trip, students visited the U of A’s kinesiology faculty and took part in fitness testing.
“We did a body composition test, we did a Windgate analysis and we also did VO2 max testing, which was quite awesome for our kids,” said Fullarton.
“The bike that one of our students sat on was the bike Connor McDavid gets to sit on, and we actually compared our stats to the Oilers’ stats.”
Fullarton noted the trip also gave students a feeling of what someone taking kinesiology gets to do throughout their university career and what they can take after graduating.
“With the trip and with this class, I really wanted students to be able to end this semester knowing if they want to take this in post-secondary or not,” she said.
“Since students are in Grade 11, it still gives them a year to make sure their courses and requirements to go into post-secondary are all lined up and ready to go.”
Kinesiology student Brady Hill said the overall experience was eye-opening as it gave him some insight into a possible future.
“I do really enjoy this class and it shows what people who work with sports teams do on the bench and behind the scenes,” he said.
“We see what they’re doing and that maybe we could be doing that someday, too.”
Hill said one of his favourite aspects of the program is the hands-on learning.
“I find it definitely helps me understand what we’re learning a lot more and I find it brings what we’re doing here into perspective,” he said.
