THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 24, 1995 TAG: 9511220279
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 02B EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY GARY EDWARDS, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
Cokey Daman told the faculty at Brandon Middle School to take a walk.
They would be wise to follow his advice. Daman knows walking like Bo knows sports.
Daman took a stroll in Buffalo, N.Y., in July.
``I won the world championship in the 20-kilometer race-walking event,'' said Daman as he donned his warm-up suit in the Brandon gymnasium. ``That's about 12.4 miles.''
The win kept his unbeaten race-walking string alive. He competes in national and international races.
In addition, Daman has 20 or so marathons under his belt, including the most-renowned, the Boston Marathon. His grueling regimen is made more noteworthy by one fact: Cokey Daman will turn 77 next month.
``I started running about 18 years ago, right before retiring,'' said the trim Daman. He took up race-walking eight years ago.
Brandon Middle School performed well in all areas last year, except physical fitness, said principal Jon Herndon.
``Only about 20 percent passed the physical fitness test,'' said Herndon, who estimated that he walks about five miles a day on the job. ``Our students' performance is low. It's one of our strategic goals to raise that.''
Toward that end, Herndon, the teachers and Daman met in the school for an hour recently during an in-service day.
Daman spent 15 minutes explaining the techniques and the benefits of race-walking. He scurried up and down the school basketball court as the school staff looked on in amazement.
``Use your arms and legs to achieve maximum benefits,'' he said. ``Walk at least 45 minutes a day if you can.''
Sharon Bolger, school information liaison, hopes that the teachers will walk and that their example will rub off on the students.
``We want the teachers to use this as one of the activities for the home-base period,'' she said. That is a period of unstructured activity teachers can use to the best advantage of the class.
``If we can set an example and show our students that athletics can carry over outside physical education class and sports, then it should help us improve,'' Bolger said.
The teachers overcame a bit of self-consciousness at first and later endorsed the program. Daman had groups of them race-walking from one end of the gym to the other before the end of the session. Dave Kavy, a computer exploratory teacher, came away convinced.
``I'm going to do this,'' he said. ``I exercise already, but probably not as much as I need to. I would rather walk like this than run.''
Dotty Cox and Scott Lambert, physical education teachers, said they hope Brandon students will agree and follow.
``We'll be working with students in PE at the same time the classroom teachers are,'' Cox said. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by GARY EDWARDS
Cokey Daman spent 15 minutes explaining the techniques and the
benefits of race-walking, then scurried up and down the school
basketball court.
by CNB