Te Puke High School Fitness trail not too hard after all

Opening of fitness trail at Te Puke High School. Contractors in the orange are Richard Strang and Josh Mihaere, pink shirt is Roy Vercoe, chairman of A Lionel Litt Memorial Education Trust, Alan Liddle

An idea for a fitness trail at Te Puke High School was initially thought to be something for the too hard basket.

But when Te Puke Rotary got wind of the idea, they decided to run with it.

The fitness trail — featuring 11 stations around the school's rugby field — is now built and being used.

School groundsman Kim Hinaki says the idea first came up in 2015 in a meeting.

"I was involved in rugby and we were taking about things for the future and I said it would be ideal if we could get a fitness trail around [the rugby field]."

The idea didn't go any further for a time, but Kim becoming involved in Te Puke Rotary Club saw it revived.

"Rotary are always looking for projects to put their time and money into — especially local projects," he says.

As well as making a contribution from its own coffers, the club applied for funding from Western Bay of Plenty District Council, Rotary New Zealand and the Lionel Litt Memorial Education Trust to ensure the project went ahead.

The trail has 11 stations and space for two more to be added. There are monkey bars, a sit up station, cargo net and balance beam.

Outside school hours the trail is available for community use, which was one of the conditions of Western Bay of Plenty District Council funding. The funding was also granted on the basis that it wasn't going to a project that replicated something that already existed elsewhere in the community.