Care for the body of Christ.
Ignite Fit trains children toward the Presidential Fitness Award — ten weeks of conditioning, real cooking and faith — so diabetes never gets a foothold. Free to families. Season One dates will be announced soon. Registration is open now.
Kids don’t need a health class. They need a season.
Texas law requires annual fitness testing in schools — and then nothing happens: no training, no award, no family follow-up. Ignite Fit is the ten weeks in between. Children train for a real test on a real date, and their parents learn alongside them.
Move
Coach-led conditioning built around the actual test events — the timed mile, curl-ups, push-ups, the shuttle run — taught through basketball, soccer and circuits. It looks like play. It is training.
Fuel
Hands-on cooking with real groceries. Kids make the meal and eat it. Carb counting, label reading, and what sugar in a drink actually does — taught as a life skill, never a diet.
Faith
Scripture, virtue and prayer. The body is a temple held in trust (1 Cor 6:19). Every season the group performs one corporal work of mercy together.
Parents are welcome at every single session — not just family night. Train alongside your child, help in the kitchen, or sit and watch; no parent is ever asked to drop off and leave.
Every family night, parents get the clinical half: A1C and what it means, carbohydrates, insurance and school 504 plans — delivered by licensed clinical partners, while the children cook and serve. We treat the household as the unit that changes.
Three tracks, one team.
- Prevent — healthy children building habits early.
- At-Risk — elevated BMI, family history, or prediabetes indicators.
- Manage — children living with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, with clinical oversight.
Every child trains together; coaching and nutrition targets are set individually with our clinical partner. Scholarships and gear are provided — no child is turned away.
Clinical partnership is required before a child in the Manage track participates. We are pursuing partners including Driscoll Children’s Hospital, Texas A&M–Corpus Christi nursing, and local certified diabetes care and education specialists.
Every child can earn something. Gold is genuinely earned.
The Presidential Fitness Test was retired in 2013 and reestablished by executive order in 2025, with the Presidential Physical Fitness Award revived in May 2026. We train children to meet it — and we recognize effort on the way there.
Bronze — Effort
60 minutes of activity a day, 5 days a week, for 6 of 8 weeks, plus a weekly nutrition goal. Earns the patch, the Bronze rocker and the national PALA+ certificate. Any child who shows up and logs the work gets here.
Silver — Healthy
Inside the FitnessGram Healthy Fitness Zone in five of six categories. Earns the Silver rocker and the Presidential Youth Fitness Award.
Gold — Presidential
85th percentile or better for age and sex across the full battery. Earns the Gold rocker, the Presidential Physical Fitness Award, and recognition by name at Mass.
Ten weeks, start to finish.
| Week | What happens |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Baseline Day. Full fitness battery, height and weight, resting heart rate, and optional glucose screening by our clinical partner. Every child leaves with a printed scorecard and a target. |
| Weeks 2–9 | Train. Twice weekly, plus the eight-week home activity log signed by a parent. A mid-season re-test in week six so kids see the movement before the finish. |
| Week 10 | Awards Day. Re-test, then patches and certificates presented at Mass or the family banquet — with the season’s results published. |
We measure A1C where clinically appropriate, BMI percentile, FitnessGram results, attendance and family confidence — and we publish what we find.
One roof: a court, a kitchen, a classroom, a chapel.
The program starts in a borrowed parish gym — but it is built to live in a permanent home. The Ignite Center is roughly 16,000 square feet: one full basketball court, a commercial teaching kitchen, a dining and family-night room, a testing classroom, lockers and offices, and a chapel. Faith, fitness and food in the same building, year round, out of the Gulf Coast heat.
| Phase | What it takes |
|---|---|
| Now | Borrowed parish gym and kitchen. First season of 25 children. |
| Next | Leased flex space with a kitchen buildout; two seasons a year. |
| Then | Acquire and convert a permanent facility under our capital campaign. |
Facility scope and costs are concept-stage and are being validated with commercial real estate, kitchen and court contractors. Pilot cost estimate: $22,400 for 25 children ($896 per child).
Put one child through a season.
$896 covers coaching, groceries, testing, gear and the patch for one child for ten weeks. Sponsor a child, a team, or the whole season.
Sponsor a Child Register a Child