Julie Downing, an instructional dean at Central Oregon Community College, and her daughter Jorun Downing  exercise together on the back deck of their home in Bend on Thursday, May 28, 2020. Faculty and students at COCC have been competing over the last few weeks in the 2020 National Recreation Movement, a socially-distanced collegiate fitness competition, as a way to stay active together during the COVID-19 shutdown.

Central Oregon Community College isn’t known for its athletics. The Bobcats only have a few club sports teams and some intramural squads, and like every other community college, they aren’t in the NCAA.

Yet, COCC students and staff are outperforming many other colleges and universities around the nation in a socially-distanced collegiate fitness competition. They’re racking up more minutes of exercise per student than athletic powerhouses like the University of Alabama and Arizona State University.

The 2020 National Recreation Movement — led by collegiate-recreation group NIRSA — also allows COCC’s students and staff to stay fit and brings them together while under social distancing rules due to COVID-19.

“It helps students feel connected to one another, with something that’s bigger than themselves,” said Andrew Davis, COCC’s director of student and campus life. “But it also maintains physical well-being, and we all know how much that affects emotional and mental wellness.”

To contribute, COCC students and staff log into the competition’s website and put in how many minutes they exercised that day. As of Tuesday, the 47 COCC staff and students that registered have logged an average of 463 minutes of fitness each, according to Davis.

The competition is flexible in terms of what types of activity counts for their school, Davis said. Participants can walk or bike or do jumping jacks, and it’ll contribute to COCC’s minutes total.

Samantha Noe, a 19-year-old student at COCC, said she’s logged 30 minutes of yoga every day for the college. She was was infrequently involved in yoga beforehand, but made it a daily routine since the program began — partially because there’s not much else for her to do in her dorm room outside of online assignments, she said.

Noe’s daily yoga sessions are an adequate substitute for the multiple hours per day she’d spend on her feet as a baking and pastry student at COCC before classes closed due to COVID-19 this spring, she said. It’s also kept her mentally healthy.

“Doing yoga every day has helped with keeping my stress levels to a minimum, keeping my head clear, and keeping in check with my body,” she said. “It gives me something to focus on.”

Julie Downing, an instructional dean at the college, runs, bikes and does yoga, for a daily exercise total of one or two hours, she said. She even turned her garage into a small home gym, with dumbbells, a bench press and more.

Downing has roped her two daughters — who run cross country and track for Oregon State University and Summit High School, respectively — and her husband into exercising with her, making the competition a family affair.

She was already an active person, but the competition has motivated Downing to exercise more consistently and avoid a “bad week,” as she put it.

“I think I would feel bad if I had a week where I didn’t do anything, and then we would drop in the rankings,” she said. “Going each week to record my activity, I don’t want to put a zero in there.”

COCC has been relatively successful in the fitness competition. As of Tuesday, the college is in 11th place out of 89 colleges, outpacing the two other, much larger, Pacific Northwest schools : Washington State and Portland State universities.

COCC’s strong showing reflects the active nature of Central Oregon, Downing said.

“We’re an active community that values fitness, and its role in disease prevention and overall feeling good,” she said.