By Ashley Webb
A second annual health and fitness challenge between Baylor University and Oklahoma State University has been delayed due to technological issues, university officials said.
Last year, the two schools launched the Live Active Challenge to promote living an active and healthy lifestyle on both campuses in a fun, competitive way.
“Even if it’s just three weeks, two weeks. For a lot of people, the hardest thing is to get started, and they can use this as a means to jumpstart their workout or jumpstart their goal of being active,” said Van Davis, Baylor’s assistant director for fitness and nutrition education.
Baylor won the challenge last year, and had plans to participate in another challenge with OSU this year, but the competition has been delayed due to website malfunctions. The links required for participants to enter their activities online has not been activated, and Baylor officials haven’t been able to solve the problem.
Last year, the competition used the American Heart Association website. This year, a new website was used, meaning Baylor has had multiple security loops to get through.
“I did not realize all that would be involved. And now three weeks into the challenge, I talked to Preston [Nesemeier], the wellness coordinator [at OSU], to see what the options would be, and we didn’t want to stop the challenge because they have done such a huge promo of beating Baylor,” Davis said.
Even though the challenge will likely not happen this semester, it will be postponed until spring, when the website will likely be up and running, Davis said.
Even with this problem, Davis still has hope the link will be active this semester.
“I am still very hopeful that the link will come and that we will be live between now and the end of the challenge…This Baylor spirit of ours, I have every confidence that even till the last day, we are going to at least beat OSU in the participation percentage challenge,” Davis said.
Davis is keeping the competitive spirit alive and continues to make predictions about this semester’s challenge.
“Last year we beat them, and this year they will probably beat us, so we were thinking that, in January, we will challenge them to a tie-breaker during basketball season,” Davis said.
Olivia Tichavsky, Baylor’s senior graphic designer, said she participated in the challenge last year. It helped her stay motivated and she made more of a commitment to try and walk every day, she said. She also would like to recruit more faculty to be more active.
“I started a lunch walking group. We tried to walk Monday through Friday,” Tichavsky said. “For the challenge next semester, I would like to get my department motivated and more active.”
Despite the technological issues, Davis said anyone interested in participating in the challenge should contact her at van_davis@baylor.edu and voice their interest in the Live Active Challenge.
When the link becomes active, Davis will email the future participants with the proper link so that they can log in their activities.
