Coach, Parent, Teacher. Hovering over the center is quarterback Patrick Carras, a teacher in-the-making coming out of Pleasant Valley
High School from Chico,CA playing here with Cabrillo Community College in the Lion Bowl. With the play clock winding down, Carras calmly awaits for time to elapse. The scoreboard reads 28-14 with time still left on the clock but the victory has already been handed to the Seahawks. After losing their first game of the season, the calm and poise Patrick Carras led his team to a nearly perfect record of 10-1. As flashes of the season escape Carras’s mind, the clock closes in on zero. Carras takes the snap and the knee. The final seconds of the bowl game countdown with players already storming the field celebrating. Three, two, one, zero! Seahawks win! With the water already being emptied on their coach, the Seahawks all gathered around Carras, greeting him with the win along with the MVP of the bowl game. The Lion Bowl trophy, already carrying their team’s name, is held up by Carras and his coach. The final whistles sound and the game is officially over with Carras and his team standing victorious. Today, Carras currently stands as a physical education teacher and a Varsity Football coach at Los Altos High School. Now leading high school students rather than a college football team, Patrick Carras takes on the responsibility of teaching young adults the importance of physical activity. In today’s society, obesity has become a present problem throughout our country. Several factors contribute to increasing rates including inactivity among kids and young adults. Patrick Carras has noted the rise in inactivity in children today, specifically in high school students, and is continuing his work as a physical education teacher to get kids enthusiastic about getting up and active. Entering his 10th year in teaching physical education and his 13th year in coaching a high school sport, Carras is encouraging high school students to take on a healthy lifestyle in and out of school on a daily basis.
With Patrick Carras seeming like
your average physical education teacher, he has quite the history as both an athlete and a person. Being born and raised in Chico, CA, Carras attended Pleasant Valley High School and participated in basketball, football, and baseball all through high school. After high school, Carras attended Cabrillo Community College in Santa Cruz and continued to play football there. In his last season, Carras led his team to a 10-1 season, including a Bowl win. After he finished playing at Cabrillo Community College, Carras went back up to Chico to finish school at Chico State. He received his degree in Physical Education in 2002 and graduated with honors. In 2003, he then earned his teaching credentials. Before coming to the Mountain View-Los Altos district, Carras took on his first job as a teacher in Scotts Valley High School where he worked for two years before going back up to Chico. After two years, Carras
went back to school to work on his Masters degree in Kinesiology which he finally finished in 2009. In 2006 during the process of getting his Master’s, Carras was hired by Mountain View High School and worked there for 4 years. After four years, he then transferred to Los Altos High School and is currently in his 4th year of teaching, totalling 8 years working in the MVLA district. In 2010, Carras had a quick run in the American Indoor Football Association (AIFA). Carras served as the backup quarterback for the San Jose Wolves, but then the team moved to Stockton, which wouldn’t work for him, so he stayed down here to work. Although he was a backup, Carras says it was a great experience to learn the arena game and get paid to play football.
Like every other PE teacher,
Carras looks for signs of effort in students and doesn’t allow any student to brush off PE class. Nowadays, physical education in high school is beginning to be the only source of physical activity a student gets. A large majority of students today are only active during school when they have PE, which is why Carras, along with every other teacher in our country, is trying to keep students interested and enthusiastic about physical activity in and out of a school environment. Having Carras as my PE teacher my freshman year, I have a stronger sense of how he carries out a normal class. He kept everyone interacted in the activities we did in each unit despite having to teach during the dreaded seventh period. Students in any class during seventh period already carry their moans and gripes with them so with PE being the not-so-favored subject by students, it would seem a little difficult to teach. Every day, my classmates and friends would be
dragging themselves into the locker rooms always looking disappointed. Already being worn out by the tireless amounts of schoolwork given each and everyday, my class never really looked forward to this time of day. Even on days where we just shoot around basketballs and walk around and talk, the majority of the class never seemed enthusiastic about PE. As we began to become more familiar with Mr.Carras, however, our attitudes towards the class seemed to change later in the year. Slowly the class became more comfortable around Carras which helped him keep the class participating. Eventually, Carras had the majority of the class enjoying the activities in each unit, including the square dancing unit! With the occasional offer of showing more effort in class or taking a lap, Carras made sure that no one
in class would be joking around and would be participating in the activity. Carras and, hopefully, every other physical education teacher in our country are continually promoting physical activity among young adults, which helps fight the rising numbers involving obesity throughout America. In 2011, 29% of high school students surveyed had participated in at least 60 minutes per day of physical activity in a week and only 31% attended physical education class daily. The participation in physical activity among kids seems to decrease as we age which is why, at ages 13-16 years old, it is somewhat a crucial time for high school students to become active in and outside of school (CDC). Although Carras is just one of the many other physical education teachers out there keeping kids active, the individual effort of
teachers like him are slowly adding up together. These small contributions to the problem at hand begin to create large impacts as a whole later down the road.
Physical Activity has al-
ways been valued by Patrick Carras as both a physical education teacher and a general human being. Being a three-sport athlete all throughout high school, his love for sports carried over after he graduated from college and persists to this day. Carras’s choice of staying active far after high school is one that would hopefully inspire his own students to do so as well. Although being active is continuously being advertised to kids today, the importance of sports and other activities are still being undervalued by kids. Year after year, the interests in young adults towards physical activity is slowly
decreasing. Between 1988-1994 to 2009-2010, the obes ity rate in kids and adolescents increased by 69%, rising from 10% to 16.9% (Healthy People). According to Carras, this statistic is starting to become much more evident within his classes. It could be valid to say that the increase in obesity in today’s kids and adolescents is connected to the increasing lack of effort from kids to be active. “There has been a rise in non-active kids for a while now. I think a lot of it has to do with the technology that we have, but I also feel it has to do with [the] lack of motivation to go outside and play and be active… A lot of the students who do not pass 5 out of our 6 fitness tests they take as 9th graders, don’t pass the Body Composition test [body fat %] and the cardiovascular fitness test [mile or the pacer] (Carras).” There’s beginning to be a rise in inactivity among adolescents today and evidently, obesity is becoming a bigger and bigger problem in our communities. Leading a healthy lifestyle outside of school and coaching, Patrick Carras hopes to lead his students by example. Working out nearly 4-5 times a day, Carras hopes that students adopt a similar routine outside of PE class to be physically healthy.
Patrick Carras is looking to
continue working as a physical education teacher and also wants to continue coaching sports whether it be baseball or football. Having recently receiving his Master’s in Kinesiology, Carras is hopefully looking to coach at the college level, whether it be baseball or football. Coaching at the high school level, however, is currently keeping him content. With physical activity being one of the most influential part of his life, Carras hopes to continue leading both a healthy lifestyle and his current and future students. With each quarter slowly ticking away, Carras hopes to make the best out of every second. “If you want to live a long time, you have to make the right choices. Kids need to learn how to develop a workout routine after high school and make it part of their day. Diet, exercise and limiting the partying to maintain a healthy lifestyle are key� (Carras).