Volunteers show off their balance skills to Crestview Elementary School’s third- and fourth-grade students Friday morning during a visit by Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel, at right, to discuss his Team Tressel Fitness Challenge. (Photo by Stephanie Ujhelyi)

COLUMBIANA — When Mike DeWine chose former NCAA champion football coach Jim Tressel as his lieutenant governor, he decided it was an opportunity to inspire Ohio’s next generation to become fit.

Tressel, who had coached at Youngstown State University and then The Ohio State University, was more than up for the task.

On Friday, he stopped by both Crestview Elementary School and Columbiana Middle School to advance the Team Tressel Fitness Challenge.

Per the state’s website, the Team Tressel Fitness Challenge is more than a school-based activity. “The challenge helps students build lifelong habits around fitness, healthy eating, and sleep and lays the foundation for a brighter future by improving students physical and mental health.”

During Friday morning’s assembly in the Crestview Elementary School gymnasium, Tressel explained how the student-led effort is designed to build self-discipline and confidence.

Activities are flexible and wide-ranging, working for every ability level.

Targeting third through eighth grade, nearly 180 third and fourth graders attended the presentation, which included their classmates, teachers and even community members performing the exercises.

Throughout the 90-minute presentation, Tressel encouraged students to not only get moving, whether it was sledding, having a family dance party or just doing simple stretches; building healthy sleep habits; practicing healthy eating as a family; and making quiet time a priority.

State Rep. Monica Robb Blasdel, herself a Crestview graduate and parents of two daughters who attend Crestview, too, was on hand as one of Tressel’s adult “pace cars,” as he dubbed his volunteers.

The program was introduced with a brief video that chronicled his history in coaching, drawing oohs and ahs from the appreciative audience.

The Team Tressel Fitness Challenge also has a YouTube channel, where aspiring junior fitness buffs can tune into demonstrations of the different exercises shown in the challenge’s book.

Student volunteers led demonstrations on jumping jacks, running in place, push-ups, how to do a plank and stretching.

The goal is to get your heart pumping, Tressel explained.

There also was activities that could be completed with people living with disabilities.

Tressel was most proud that the program also includes activities that allow disabled individuals to get active.

You choose what you want to do and meet those goals, he explained, urging kids to get their families involved too.

It was also a reunion of sorts with Casey Bogert, Crestview’s athletic director who had played tight end on Tressel’s championship team at Youngstown State University in the late 1990s.

Bogert was called upon to exhibit his best balance.

The visit was broadcast live on the program’s YouTube channel, where participants also could see demonstrations of some of the activities online.

Tressel estimated that he had visited 56 schools so far through the state of Ohio as part of the Team Tressel Fitness Challenge.

He urged students to try and perfect that Fitness Focus Challenge, which none of the schools had mastered. After many attempts, they finally were successful, potentially creating an all-time record for focus per Tressel.

Next up was Columbiana Middle School, where Team Tressel presented the fitness challenge to grades five through eight.

With a packed day of visits to Columbiana County, Tressel also had planned to visit East Palestine High School, where he would showcase the district’s successful workforce development program and local partnership with HSH Home Builders. However, the planned visit to the high school’s building trades was postponed and will be scheduled to another date.

sujhelyi@mojonews.com