By Tyler Dahlgren

It’s funny how fast something can come together in a small town, where word seems to spread at the speed of light and folks are somehow even quicker to lend a helping hand.

One minute a YouTube ad plays on a treadmill screen at the local YMCA, and the next minute the famous creator of “Body by Jake” is in an elementary school on the foot of The Sandhills cutting ribbons and unveiling a brand new $100,000 fitness center.

If it sounds like a whirlwind, that’s because it was, said Jesse Kincheloe, who wears multiple hats as Gothenburg Public Schools Facilities Director and one of the founders of The Burg, an organization that promotes and funds the community’s youth activities and programs.

“It’s a crazy story with a crazy beginning,” Kincheloe laughed. “That guy on the treadmill, a friend of mine named Luke, reached out to Dustin (Ehlers) at ‘The Burg’, which at the time was very new. Dustin emailed the contest to myself and Bryson Mahlberg (the school’s PE teacher). We got together, talked it over, and thought, ‘Well, we better give it a shot.’”

This is where things get interesting. The deadline for the video submission to the National Foundation for Governors’ Fitness Councils, which has dedicated fitness centers to schools in 38 states, was March 16th, just two weeks away. At the same time, the Swedes were making a deep run at the girls state basketball tournament.

“The more the girls won, the more we didn’t have school that week,” Kincheloe said. “It was a time crunch to put it all together, polish it off and hit the submit button, but we got it done.”

In a matter of 24 hours, Kincheloe had a script written, a videographer in junior (now senior) Trevor Galas, and three junior high students-turned-actors committed to the project.

The script, Kincheloe admits, was a bit shoddy, but the kids’ improvisation skills made up for that. Galas, he added, brought the video to life with his next-level editing skills. The final product was intentionally goofy, and its creators wondered if the NFGFC would even take it seriously.

(Courtesy Photo)

“We hit the mark as far as what they were looking for,” said Angie Richeson, who was the elementary principal at the time and now serves as the district’s Director of Teaching & Learning. “It was three junior high boys with ridiculous junior high and dad jokes and it just captured their attention.”

Jake Steinfeld, the creator of “Body by Jake” and a chairman of the NFGFC, said as much at the ribbon-cutting ceremony on October 13th, a celebration attended by 2nd-8th grade students excited to get a peak at the state-of-the-art facility, which was developed for children ages 8-14.

More than 150 videos were submitted by schools across Nebraska, so the group from Gothenburg was floored when they were selected as finalists and scheduled for an interview over Zoom with Steinfeld.

Here they were, the dozen or so drivers behind this whirlwind of a project, relieved to have met the application deadlines and cautiously optimistic yet entirely realistic about their chances of actually winning. Steinfeld fired question after question at the crew from Gothenburg, and, honestly, things weren’t going all that great.

“It was nerve-racking, and he was hitting us with some pretty hard-hitting questions,” said Kincheloe. “For some reason, it wasn’t going as well as we had anticipated it going.”

They were reeling, back on their heels, and it felt like their odds were dwindling. 

“Then he said he had some really important details we needed to make sure and write down,” Kincheloe remembers. “I look around and realize nobody brought a piece of paper or a pencil.”

Oh, well. Given the time crunch, they were long shots to begin with, right?

Mahlberg fired up a whiteboard and readied himself to jot down what was relayed. Steinfeld’s pause seemed to last forever, an effective dramatic flair.

“Finally, he said ‘You won!’” Kincheloe said. “We just exploded. The whole room went crazy. I’m sure you could hear us at the county line, we were so loud.”

Loud, until they weren’t. The group was sworn to secrecy, Richeson said. They couldn’t share the news with the student body or on social media with the community until the official press release hit the wires a few weeks later. 

(Courtesy Photo)

It was the first step in a tantalizing waiting game.

Trucks arrived on September 6th to set up the equipment, which was, at long last, revealed more than a month later at the ceremony. Last week, fifth and sixth-graders became the first Gothenburg students to use what current principal Josie Floyd calls a “tremendous gift” to the school.

“To see their excitement, it gives you goosebumps,” said Mahlberg. “Every kid in the class, regardless if they’re an athlete or not, wanted to get on. That’s the coolest thing about the fitness center, is that it’s not tailored to athletes. It’s tailored to eight-to-fourteen year olds, to get them moving and active. That’s all it’s about.”

The old gym was in relatively good shape, said Mahlberg, but the school didn’t have any weight equipment at all, which was emphasized (in hilarious fashion) in the application video.

“There was definitely a need for that, so we pushed it pretty hard,” he continued. “When you have nothing, that type of gift changes everything.”

Most importantly, the fitness center gives students at Gothenburg Elementary opportunities that didn’t exist before. It’ll be exciting, Mahlberg said, to map out how the facility will be used outside of school hours and throughout the summer.

“The potential is almost limitless,” he said. “I’ve seen some amazing things already. A couple students come to mind, students who struggle to be active in a regular PE class but who were the first ones to jump on an elliptical because they’d never seen one before. This might have totally changed their outlook on physical fitness for the rest of their lives.”

They have a saying in Gothenburg Public Schools: “All means all.”

In reality, it’s more than a saying, but a way of life.

“That’s something we take great pride in,” said Richeson. “We coined it ‘‘The Gothenburg Way.’ Projects are rarely done in isolation, and this is another example of the kind of collaboration we’re so proud of.”

The new fitness center comes with quite a story, and they’ll be telling it around here for a long, long time. A tale that started with an ad on YouTube, made its way to ‘The Burg’ and ended up at Gothenburg Elementary, where a group of staff and students weren’t afraid to take a chance.

“It shows our students that it’s okay to take risks,” Floyd said. “You might fail, sure, but you might win a $100,000 gift, too.”

(Courtesy Photo)