Imagine coming to gym class at the end of a grueling day. The activity in the class is so hard that breaking a sweat is not only inevitable, but prevalent from the start. For most, this type of gym class seems occasional. For those in Patricia Moulakelis’s dance and aerobics classes, this scenario is common.

“Each day in class we have a different workout that incorporates different levels so that everyone can be challenged to [the point of breaking a sweat],” junior Alexandra Arnold said. “You have to try your absolute hardest for your grade to get all your participation points, which is how I think [Moulakelis] encourages her own standard of everyone needing to work their hardest, and do their best.”

According to Arnold, not only is the class difficult and challenging, but it is serious, too.

“Oftentimes [Moulakelis] will threaten us with something, be it our yoga days or anything else,” Arnold said. “[When she came into the room the other day] she told everyone they would have to be quiet or we wouldn’t get to have our yoga day on Friday. And she’s serious about it, too; when she threatens the class like that, she’s completely serious.”

Although she’s keen about keeping students on track, according to Moulakelis, she also believes that students need to be self motivated in order to maintain solid physical and mental health.

“The most important thing [I teach] is confidence,” Moulakelis said. “I want [my students] to have the ability, no matter what your fitness ability is, to have enough confidence and to go into whatever it is and live a healthy life—find something you want to do and for the rest of your life and do it.”

Part of this is due to what she sees happening with the kids in this generation.

“I see a lot of kids with so many injuries nowadays,” Moulakelis said. “And that shouldn’t be happening. When I was [their same] age, that wasn’t happening.”

But, according to Moulakelis, part of this belief also comes from one of her biggest philosophies.

“I believe that a body in motion stays in motion—I really believe that,” Moulakelis said. “I’m still going at my age; I really believe this, and I try to teach it.”

Senior Melanie McNulty, Captain of De La Cru, recalled that practice for dance is twofold.

“Some days, […] we would do warm-ups,” McNulty said. “Then we would do our situps, wall-sits, workouts. […] As dancers, we need to keep our stamina for when you’re dancing for three minutes straight, and we need to work hard. So there are some days where there’s not as much going on, but when it comes closer to performances, we work really hard to keep us in shape and sweating.”

According to McNulty, Moulakelis is very proud of her students.

“She is very proud of us as a coach,” McNulty said. “When she comes to stuff like the pep rally and our football games, she is very dedicated to making sure that we’re in good shape and where we’re supposed to be.”

McNulty said Moulakelis’ support is fundamental to her success.

“This year, at homecoming, we performed at the sophomore boys’ game,” McNulty said. “When we got to the game, she gave me a bouquet of red flowers and congratulated me on being the homecoming queen and working super hard for De La Cru […]. I will never forget this because the whole reason I won is because she nominated me for the club […] and I thought that was a really nice thing of her to do as a coach.”

For a teacher whose chief goal is to motivate students, Moulakelis believes it’s essential that students are taught, in high school, everything they need to know to be a healthy adult.
“I always say that I’m [the students’] last line of defense,” Moulakelis said. “Nobody’s ever going to make you work out again once you graduate from this school. But if you have the tools to know how to do things, when you do graduate […] you can use [those tools] to continue on and be confident.”