Let’s Get Physical : Southland Youngsters Test Their Fitness in Soviet-Designed Program

For 10-year-old Danny Sanchez of El Segundo, who says he stays in good shape by running and doing push-ups and sit-ups, running back and forth in the morning sun was great fun.

For 16-year-old Jeremy Argo, an El Segundo High School baseball player who threw a baseball 86 meters, it was a chance to get out of classes for most of the day.

For Damien Barton, an 8-year-old from Compton, it was tough going. He strained and grimaced doing eight pull-ups. “It was harder than I thought,” he said.

And for George Allen, veteran professional football coach and chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, the turnout on Thursday of 250 El Segundo and 60 Compton school children to perform Soviet physical fitness tests on the El Segundo High School football field launched a project he hopes will get American youngsters hooked on exercise.

Two-Nation Testing

In February, Allen and Marat Gramov, chairman of the Committee for Physical Culture and Sports in the Soviet Union, signed an agreement under which 20,000 American youngsters will take the Soviet fitness test and an equal number of Soviet youths will take the American test developed by the President’s council.

The El Segundo event, which featured appearances by such sports figures as Olympic decathlon champion Rafer Johnson, UCLA basketball coach Walt Hazzard and tennis star Tracy Austin, was the kickoff of a year-long program to test volunteer school children from across the country, Allen said. The next event will be June 2 in Washington.

The youngsters, who ranged in age from 7 to 17, were tested on such exercises as pull-ups, baseball throw, 15- and 50-meter swims, the long jump and a 2,000-meter run, which was held on Monday. Young children did the shuttle run, in which they ran 30 feet back and forth three times. Test results, which will show how the young Americans stack up against their Soviet counterparts, will be compiled next week.

Allen said the two-nation program is not intended to be competitive, but to “motivate all youth to improve their physical fitness” and “to get P.E. back in the school curriculum where it used to be.”

Allen said American youngsters are not strong, have too much body fat and do not play enough body-building sports. “They have poor diets and they watch television or listen to radio 7 1/2-hours a day,” he said, asserting that the United States is 23rd or 24th in the world in youth fitness, trailing the Soviet Union and such countries as China, West Germany, Australia, Israel and Belgium.

He said that while American schools have dropped or reduced physical education, Soviet youngsters have compulsory exercise six days a week. The Soviet fitness test is more difficult than the U.S. test, he said, because it includes swimming.

Look Fit, Energetic

Despite Allen’s gloomy assessment, youngsters on the El Segundo field looked fit and were full of energy. Melissa Sanchez, 8, who was in the shuttle run, said she is not one of the junk-food-and-TV bunch. “I run a lot every day and eat nutritious things,” she said.

Jeremy Argo said the baseball throw was “no big deal” for him. “I have a pretty good arm,” said the athlete, who wants to play professional baseball. But he agreed that most teen-agers are not fit and are “into drugs and smoking.”

He thought the test was a good idea “to see what kind of shape American kids are in,” saying that the 2,000-meter run and pull-ups were “pretty hard.”

Although students ostensibly were selected at random by their schools to take the test, there were indications that good athletes were deliberately included. Argo said everyone in his weight training class was urged to take the test--”They told us we could miss school”--and El Segundo Middle School Principal Bob Kingston said, “We put in good ones and some average ones.”

‘Cream of the Crop’

Allen conceded that for the kickoff of the U.S.-Soviet fitness program he got “the cream of the crop,” adding that “the Soviets will do the same thing.”

Allen, who has offices in El Segundo, said he asked the school district to take part. He said El Segundo is “predominantly white” and he invited the predominantly black Compton school district to send children because he wanted a “racially mixed group of kids.”