EAT. LEARN. PLAY.,

children find fun in making physical activity part of their daily routine

BY BOB BAPTIST

NYLAH WADE was teased for years by some classmates at her Lewis Center elementary school. Her cheeks were big, they told her She was short. She had curly hair.

“Her self-image was put through the wringer,” said her mother DiAnna.

By the sixth grade, Nylah also was gaining weight at an alarming rate. “I was a couch potato,” she said. “I’d watch TV, eat food and play on my laptop.”

If friends showed up to play outside, Nylah would join them for about fiveminutes, get tired and return to the couch. Three years ago, her pediatrician diagnosed her as prediabetic. She was subsequently referred to Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Play Strong, a medically supervised wellness program that uses game-playing to show kids that exercise can be fun. Nylah didn’t want to try it.

“I was like, ‘What’s the point?’ I thought it was a waste of my time [and wasn’t] going to help me at all,” she said.

Instead, it changed her life.

Thank you for generously supporting the Memorial Tournament Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and Center for Perinatal Research at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

With your support, our physicians and scientists are working hand-in-hand to save the tiniest of premature babies. And what we learn through our research discoveries here is helping newborns everywhere. As America’s largest neonatal care and research network, you make it possible for us to give families what they need most. Hope. Visit us at NationwideChildrens.org

The tie-in between Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation has been part of a natural charitable evolution for the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday and its special relationship with the Nicklaus Children’s Health Care Foundation.

Play Strong was started at Nationwide Children’s in 2012 by Travis Gallagher, the functional rehabilitation coordinator in its Sports Medicine department. He began with a handful of cancer survivors who needed exercise to aid their recovery.

“Then other [departments] started saying, ‘Well, we have kids that need to move more, too. Can we send them to you?’ ” Gallagher said. “We found that there are very few diagnoses in the hospital that movement or physical activity wouldn’t benefit them.

Before the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Play Strong was serving 100 to 200 patients a year, Gallagher said. After continuing via Zoom through the pandemic, “We’re now seeing over 400 kids a year, and it continues to rise.”

That’s why Workday’s sponsorship of the Memorial Tournament, which began in 2022, has been a godsend for Play Strong. One of the new charitable beneficiariesof the Tournament is a Workday partner, Eat. Learn. Play., a foundation started in 2019 by NBA star Stephen Curry and his wife Ayesha. Its mission is supporting the well-being of children in Oakland, California, the Currys’ adopted hometown, by giving them access to nutritious meals, quality reading resources and opportunities to play and be active.

Since its launch, Eat. Learn. Play. has raised more than $40 million for its programs in Oakland. Its firsttwo years as a beneficiaryof the Memorial Tournament have resulted in it designating more than $1 million to Play Strong and three other Nationwide Children’s programs focused on nutrition and reading.

The tie-in between Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation has been part of a natural charitable evolution for the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday and its special relationship with the Nicklaus Children’s Health Care Foundation.

“When we started Eat. Learn. Play., the emphasis on Play definitely came from Stephen and his passion for physical activity and youth sports,” said Chris Helfrich, president and chief executive office of the foundation. “His approach to Play was not around how we can create the next generation of great athletes; it was understanding that physical activity plays such a fundamental part of a healthy childhood. That’s what it’s all about and Play Strong does an incredible job of doing that in the Columbus area.”

Gallagher said that while Play Strong was “doing great” before the involvement of Eat. Learn. Play., the additional

We’re

Tournament presented by Workday.

When an event like the Memorial Tournament brings the community together, we take notice. Thank you to everyone for your hard work and dedication, from all of us at Huntington. Your efforts are inspirational.

When an event like the Memorial Tournament brings the community together, we take notice. Thank you to everyone for your hard work and dedication, from all of us at Huntington. Your efforts are inspirational.

When an event like the Memorial Tournament brings the community together, we take notice. Thank you to everyone for your hard work and dedication, from all of us at Huntington. Your efforts are inspirational.

funding has helped it spread even more. “We have big plans. Our whole goal … is to increase our reach. We want to be able to reach more kids. We want to improve their short-term quality of life and also their long-term health.”

Play Strong strives to do the same with twice-a-week sessions for 12 weeks in which kids engage in various activities from game-playing to basketball to soccer to riding bikes to taking hikes.

“We’ve found that when kids are playing, their heart rates get higher, and they have more fun. They don’t realize they’re working as hard as if we did exercise,” Gallagher said. “Every week, we show them a differentway to be active. We mix it up with the idea that maybe they really like one of those things, and when they graduate our program, they may continue [being active]. We try to make physical activity enjoyable, give them ways to be physically active, and give them a road map towards being physically active at least an hour a day.”

Nylah’s self-confidence and selfesteem increased dramatically after she began participating in Play Strong.

Kids starting the program receive inducements to stay with it, including an item of sports or exercise equipment at graduation as well as a $100 “scholarship” to use toward a gym membership or bicycle or anything else that will “help them continue along on their journey,” Gallagher said.

“The more we can get these kids moving, the better their short-term and long-term health are, physical and mental.”

Nylah needed only three classes to change her mind about Play Strong.

“She came home and was like, ‘Mom, we played basketball, and everybody was making fun of my height and doubting me and I showed them up,’ ” DiAnna recalled. “It was the firsttime kids actually wanted Nylah on their team.”

“It sparked my confidence, Nylah said.