Coronavirus: Quarantine workouts put Father Lopez coach on worldwide stage
Zach Dean @ZachDeanDBNJ
Larissa Maloney was looking for a way to keep her PE class active. She got way more in return.
You'd be hard-pressed to find someone less suited for social isolation than Larissa Maloney.
She was a three-sport athlete at Seabreeze High School, a star on the Lynn University volleyball team, and a personal trainer in South Florida.
She's been a motivational speaker, a professional beach volleyball player, and the host of her own podcast. A few years back, Maloney started her own volleyball academy — Blue Crush — in Ormond Beach. Last spring, she was named the head volleyball coach and a PE instructor at Father Lopez High.
Lately, however, Maloney can't be any of those things. As the coronavirus pandemic rages on, the 34-year-old with a master degree in communications has been searching for ways to communicate with the outside world.
And then one day in March, she just hit the record button.
"What happened after that was kind of shocking," she said. "It was meant for my students, not the masses. It was heartwarming to see."
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Maloney created her own YouTube channel — Active Kids 2.0 — on March 30 as a way to keep her students and players at Father Lopez engaged during the current crisis. The premise was simple: live-stream a 30-minute workout every day at 9 a.m. and her students would follow along and write a paper that afternoon on what they took from it.
The night before going live, Maloney posted about the idea in a couple of physical education forums she's in, hoping to get ideas and gain some viewers.
That Monday, over 5,000 people tuned in to Maloney's first video. By Tuesday night, that number had doubled. By last Friday, Active Kids 2.0 had over 15,000 views and over 1,000 subscribers.
"Once the ball got rolling … it was 100, 200, 500, 1,000," said Maloney, who tries to do a different workout every day. "It was amazing to watch."
The number of viewers surprised Maloney. But who was watching, and where they were coming from stunned her.
"I got messages from people in England, Virginia, New York, California," she said. "That's when I was like, OK, this is something."
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There was Tanya Dozier, who saw the video shared on Facebook and followed along with her 8-year-old daughter, Christian, in Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania.
"We got to do basketball workouts," said Christian, whose AAU basketball season was canceled last month. "We did squats and jumps and got into our basketball form. It was really fun."
There was also Stacy Valdez, whose daughter's fourth grade elementary school teacher posted the workout on the school's PTA page … in Houston, Texas.
"I've been looking for all kinds of different exercise videos for her to follow," Stacy said of her daughter, Kierstin. "It's been hard to find one that she's really enjoyed but she likes this one a lot. Larissa is a female, so she relates on that level. She's also really encouraging for kids, young and old.
"She'll put it on her Kindle and go outside and do it. It gives me 30 minutes to do whatever I need to do inside. I have my time and she has her time. It's been nice."
Stephanie Mier, an art teacher and volleyball coach at Hardee High School in Wauchula, first heard about the workouts from Superintendent Bob Shayman.
Mier not only shared the videos with her team but also follows along with her four kids at home.
"I think we can relate to her as teachers," Mier said. "We know that some students are at home with sometimes nobody to inspire or motivate them to be active. It's nothing extraordinary or big that she's doing ... there are people out there that have done this. I think she's just so real and so personal. She has a passion for what she does."
The local impact has also reached beyond Father Lopez.
Right down the road, Mainland athletic trainer and health science teacher Kallie Walker has used Maloney's videos as an assignment for her students.
"I thought it was awesome with everyone being so distant," said Walker, who grew up two houses down from Maloney. "For anybody to get out and be active right now, it makes you feel better, gets your blood rushing, you're more awake, more alert and you can focus.
"Knowing that some of your classmates and teachers are doing the same thing, seeing that community of people you're used to seeing every day, it's good to know that you're not alone."
Father Lopez's Gabriella Gomez, a freshman on Maloney's volleyball team, said having a daily workout has brought some welcomed normalcy back to her life. Lopez freshman Connor Mohre, a student in Maloney's PE class, said breaking up hours of virtual school with a workout has helped him focus.
"It's definitely helped me school work-wise," said Mohre, who does the workouts from his living room with his two younger brothers. "It really puts me in a focused mode to where I'm able to have better success with all this online learning.
"They've been really good to do under the circumstances we're currently in."
With those circumstances continuing to escalate — the country is now heading into its second month of quarantine — Maloney said any mental escape, even for 30 minutes a day, can help.
"I think it's something America needs in this time," she said.
Added Walker: "It gives us a sense of community again. No matter where everybody is, at least we're all doing the same thing."
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