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Exercise Video at Mississippi College Wins National Award


Mississippi College Kinesiology Department graduate assistant Jon Phillips of Greenwood.

Millions of college students, senior citizens and young kids across America should dramatically step up their fitness levels.

That’s the message in a new award-winning video starring Mississippi College kinesiology graduate student Jon Phillips. Communication major Varina Hart filmed and edited the two-minute production.

Encouraging people to “get moving,” the hilarious video filmed on the Clinton campus was good enough to earn second place honors in a national contest sponsored by the American College of Sports Medicine.

Professionals with the 45,000-member organization will watch the video at their annual meeting in Orlando, Florida May 27-June 1. It’s the world’s largest sports medicine and exercise science group.

Phillips plays the role of “’The’ Gary,” the aggressive guy with dark sunglasses in charge of the fictitious Department of Sedentary Behavior Prevention on campus. Jon runs around urging infuriated college students to stop texting, get off their comfy chairs and burn calories. The no-nonsense character in the video is loosely modeled after MC public safety officer Gary Keyes.

A 23-year-old Greenwood native, Phillips developed the funny video content and script. MC Department of Kinesiology students joined the fun as part of the cast.

“Jon worked really hard on this project,” said professor Suzanne McDonough, the Christian university’s applied physiology laboratory director and a longtime runner.

There were 92 contest videos submitted, so 2nd place represents an outstanding showing by the MC students. Arizona State University turned in the winning video.

A Clinton resident, Phillips hopes delegates to the American College of Sports Medicine conference will see the video and get inspired to walk between their blitz of sessions in Orlando. “Everybody will be sitting all day listening to lectures at a conference talking about exercise.”  It will mark the organization’s 61st annual meeting.

His video touches on a timely topic when studies show that one of every four USA children fails to get enough exercise. In recent years, Mississippi’s rates of obesity, heart disease and diabetes are among the worst in the nation.

A graduate of Pillow Academy in Greenwood, Phillips is a 2013 exercise science graduate at Mississippi College. A graduate assistant at MC’s master’s program in exercise science, he plans to attend the conference in the Sunshine State.

To view the new Mississippi College video go to http://acsmannualmeeting.org/students/video-contest/.