Valley cities, schools win big by getting active in the state’s fitness challenge

Communities and school districts in the Rio Grande Valley dominated the annual It’s Time Texas Community Challenge, an eight-week competition that promotes healthy lifestyles.

For the fifth year in a row, the city of McAllen won first place in the large community category. The city of Pharr also earned first place in the statewide competition in the medium community category and the city of Los Fresnos got first place in the small community category.

The news comes nearly two months after WalletHub.com ranked the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission metro area as the “fattest” city in America.

“This is truly a win-win for our entire community,” McAllen Mayor Javier Villalobos said in a news release earlier this week. “Not only are we being recognized for the efforts to be healthy; our community actually got healthy. In McAllen, everyone, from our students to parents, young adults, businesses and everyone in between, is striving to live active, fit and healthy. We look forward to next year’s challenge.”

School districts in the Valley were also well represented. Pharr-San Juan-Alamo ISD won first place in the large school district category for the fourth consecutive year. Also bringing home first place awards were McAllen ISD in the medium school district category and Los Fresnos CISD in the small school district category.

“The competition (asks) people to download the It’s Time Texas app to their phone where they can log in their healthy activities,” Xochitl Mora, communications director for the city of McAllen, said. “There’s a menu on that app where you can log in healthy activities from eating healthy, exercising, different exercises, etcetera.”

Each community and school district enters the competition in one of the five categories; those being metro, large, medium, small or extra small. Despite the city of McAllen entering in the second largest category, the city accounted for 3.76 million points, the highest points among all participating communities.

“What we do here in the city of McAllen is organize different events that our employees and the community can take part in,” Mora said. “Obviously, the past few years were a little bit challenging because of COVID. Everything went virtual last year. This year we did a hybrid of in-person and virtual events where people could join either through Zoom or YouTube to participate.”

And every little bit counts. “All those activities that are hosted by the community, all of the people participating, all of the people logging in and posting those activities that they’re participating in, whether it’s a formal event like the ones we organize or exercising on their own, count towards points for the competition,” she continued.

According to the city, 2,225 people participated for the city of McAllen, logging nearly 3,200 healthy actions. McAllen ISD had 798 participants.

For the city of Pharr, it was the community’s fourth time bringing home first place in the competition.

“It’s part of our mission to give the community a quality of life,” Pharr Mayor Pro Tem and Place 4 Commissioner Daniel Chavez said. “We do that by creating parks, trails, and even the state-of-the-art natatorium that we just built, and taking programs with the parks and rec to different school districts to encourage exercise and better eating habits.”

Chavez said he has taken it upon himself to become a participant in the yearly competition, and in the last nine months, he has lost 60 pounds.

“It’s all part of different lifestyles,” Chavez said. “I’m from South Pharr. We’d eat dos platos de menudo, six tacos de barbacoa and Hot Cheetos with cheese. That’s just the way we were raised. It’s part of the way we are. Changing our eating habits, now I can’t even finish a six-ounce sirloin. … It’s a perfect example of what we can do to help ourselves. We want everyone in the community of Pharr to do that — change your lifestyle to something healthier.”