In the beginning, Danyelle Carter had only one thought: I'm going to die. The 7 a.m. boot camp workout class at Spelman College is a muscle-testing, lung-battering trial for even the fittest. And Carter feels no shame in admitting that for most of her young life, she has been far from fit.
Last year, Carter says, she weighed 340 pounds. She grew up in the Bahamas and South Florida, and she learned to eat and eat and eat. Her close-knit Caribbean upbringing centered on family, and family meant food: plenty of it, all the time. If a handful of rice was good, two handfuls were better. "And everything was fried, dripping with grease," she says. Carter studied hard in school, earning an associates degree from Miami Dade College and, obeying her mother's orders, took classes to swap her native lilt for her current TV-anchor diction. But being a girl, nobody expected her to run or lift weights or play a sport. Inactivity was the rule, healthy role models the exception. High school gym class? "It was kind of like, ‘Here's a basketball, and if you use if for an hour a day it will help your heart.'" When Carter arrived in Georgia in September, a walk across the impeccably kept, historically black, all-women's campus inspired dread. It gets hot in Atlanta. It's hotter when you're more than 300 pounds.
But Carter is a sister of Spelman, and the sisterhood strives to do extraordinary things. Last November, the college announced it was dropping all intercollegiate sports at the end of this academic year, the first school in a decade to leave the NCAA. True to its motto of "A Choice to Change the World," Spelman is choosing to move $1 million a year previously budgeted for varsity sports into what leaders call a "Wellness Revolution" for all students-pouring resources into exercise classes and nutrition counseling and intramurals.
Carter jumped two-footed into Spelman's young wellness program last fall before she was even enrolled. Awaiting a transfer, she wasn't officially admitted until January. That didn't stop her or Spelman from changing her life. Carter studied all the fitness and nutrition information Spelman had to offer, and even attended campus fitness classes. She tried tai chi and Zumba, and befriended the treadmill. Within a few months, she figured she was ready for some stronger medicine, so she signed up for the boot camp in January. It hurt. More than once, she remembers thinking, One more burpee, one more lunge, and my heart's giving out. It never did.
Danyelle Carter says she now weighs 220, losing more than 25 pounds since the start of the year. She runs nearly every day. Sometimes, when she's stressed out from studying at 2 a.m., she'll jog six laps-or two miles-around the Spelman Oval, past Rockefeller Hall's stained glass and the flowery alumna arch that only graduates may walk through. She swore off cake, quit eating cereal at night and leaves the candy alone. "I love tofu now," she says. And she made peace with boot camp. Even when mired in the worst part of the workout, called 21 Down-21 pushups, then 21 crunches, then 20 of each, then 19, 18, and so on, with no rest between sets-Carter reminds herself of her mantra: Pain is weakness leaving the body.
This is how revolutions are born. And Spelman's may be a link in a chain that one day leaves the NCAA, as well as the rest of our hypercompetitive, over-selective, winner-take-all interscholastic sports system, as dead as the tsar of all the Russias.
Meanwhile, Danyelle Carter might just be the student athlete of the future. A future marked not by madness, but by common sense. One where the goal is not a championship today, but lifelong play, and where the measure of success is not maximum revenue, but a minimum level of health. Spelman College is doing something remarkable. Instead of spending seven figures a year on a few dozen varsity athletes, Spelman will expand its wellness program, funding fitness for everyone on campus.
Last year, Carter says, she weighed 340 pounds. She grew up in the Bahamas and South Florida, and she learned to eat and eat and eat. Her close-knit Caribbean upbringing centered on family, and family meant food: plenty of it, all the time. If a handful of rice was good, two handfuls were better. "And everything was fried, dripping with grease," she says. Carter studied hard in school, earning an associates degree from Miami Dade College and, obeying her mother's orders, took classes to swap her native lilt for her current TV-anchor diction. But being a girl, nobody expected her to run or lift weights or play a sport. Inactivity was the rule, healthy role models the exception. High school gym class? "It was kind of like, ‘Here's a basketball, and if you use if for an hour a day it will help your heart.'" When Carter arrived in Georgia in September, a walk across the impeccably kept, historically black, all-women's campus inspired dread. It gets hot in Atlanta. It's hotter when you're more than 300 pounds.But Carter is a sister of Spelman, and the sisterhood strives to do extraordinary things. Last November, the college announced it was dropping all intercollegiate sports at the end of this academic year, the first school in a decade to leave the NCAA. True to its motto of "A Choice to Change the World," Spelman is choosing to move $1 million a year previously budgeted for varsity sports into what leaders call a "Wellness Revolution" for all students-pouring resources into exercise classes and nutrition counseling and intramurals.
Carter jumped two-footed into Spelman's young wellness program last fall before she was even enrolled. Awaiting a transfer, she wasn't officially admitted until January. That didn't stop her or Spelman from changing her life. Carter studied all the fitness and nutrition information Spelman had to offer, and even attended campus fitness classes. She tried tai chi and Zumba, and befriended the treadmill. Within a few months, she figured she was ready for some stronger medicine, so she signed up for the boot camp in January. It hurt. More than once, she remembers thinking, One more burpee, one more lunge, and my heart's giving out. It never did.
Danyelle Carter says she now weighs 220, losing more than 25 pounds since the start of the year. She runs nearly every day. Sometimes, when she's stressed out from studying at 2 a.m., she'll jog six laps-or two miles-around the Spelman Oval, past Rockefeller Hall's stained glass and the flowery alumna arch that only graduates may walk through. She swore off cake, quit eating cereal at night and leaves the candy alone. "I love tofu now," she says. And she made peace with boot camp. Even when mired in the worst part of the workout, called 21 Down-21 pushups, then 21 crunches, then 20 of each, then 19, 18, and so on, with no rest between sets-Carter reminds herself of her mantra: Pain is weakness leaving the body.
This is how revolutions are born. And Spelman's may be a link in a chain that one day leaves the NCAA, as well as the rest of our hypercompetitive, over-selective, winner-take-all interscholastic sports system, as dead as the tsar of all the Russias.
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Our great nation was just inundated with the Caligula-worthy circus that is the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. College kids who won't see a classroom for weeks perform hard, physical labor (for free, at least as far as the IRS knows) on behalf of an American audience that doesn't give a rat's ass whether players can read so long as they convert some timely threes, cover the spread and bust someone else's bracket. The tournament epitomizes what our century-old interscholastic athletics system is all about. March Madness-a tiny, televised group of elites moving at high speeds to entertain great, couch-clinging masses that don't move at all-is the way sports lives now.Meanwhile, Danyelle Carter might just be the student athlete of the future. A future marked not by madness, but by common sense. One where the goal is not a championship today, but lifelong play, and where the measure of success is not maximum revenue, but a minimum level of health. Spelman College is doing something remarkable. Instead of spending seven figures a year on a few dozen varsity athletes, Spelman will expand its wellness program, funding fitness for everyone on campus.
by Luke Cyphers, SB Nation | Read more:
Photo: Getty Images
