For most of Jefferson’s weight room history, never has there been a club that has called for an eighth period entirely for girls to work out and exercise. This year, this change has finally happened.
By Eric Feng and Nivika Gandhi
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FIRED UP for FITNESS
irls want to lift. It's not them that hinders it, it's the environment," junior Riley Cooper said. Going to the weight room causes a lot of pressure for girls that are interested in fitness. The environment is very different, and there aren’t a lot of their peers there that they can exercise together with “I didn’t really go [to the weight room] at the beginning just because I didn’t really know is was an option and also, I didn’t know how to lift, and I was too afraid to
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learn, because I didn’t know any of the guys there and they were all scary seniors, Cooper said. Before the Club Two years ago, Cooper was a freshman playing on the girls varsity softball and basketball teams. Her love for athleticism and sports led her to spend as many of her lunch and eighth periods in the Jefferson weight room as she could. However, as driven as she was to learn how
to lift, the weight room was never the most comfortable place for her. “I was just a little freshman, trying to get a bench, some squats, maybe some free weights, and all these upperclassmen guys that were double our size and height would just stare at us. They wouldn't let us use a lot of equipment, some of them would just be shirtless all the time. It was just like a really intimidating environment,” Cooper said.
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