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MARBLE CITY, OK - The Cherokee Nation selected Marble City School as one of seventeen schools to share in a $1 million Diabetes Prevention Grant. Schools that applied for the Cherokee Nation Diabetes Prevention Grant had to submit a plan for improving their existing physical activity program or starting a new one.

Marble City School used the $40,000 in grant money to furnish a new fitness center.

"Health is an important issue in this area," said Larry Couch, superintendent of Marble City School. "This is a great program to help kids in school become fit along with the community members."

Marble City schools took an old storage facility and converted it into a fitness center with weight machines, treadmills, stationary bicycles and walking machines, with the hopes to add more.

"We currently have a trainer who comes in 2 days a week and we hope to eventually expand that out to 5 days soon," Couch said. " We want the community to feel free to use this equipment as well. We have enough equipment up here for around 30 people at a time to be using. Right now we only get about 10 to 15 people per day using the facility, but hopefully as word gets out we will have even more. We want our school to be more accessible to the public and we hope by having this new fitness facility we can accomplish just that."

The Cherokee Nation distributed the grant as a form of diabetes prevention among Native American people. Schools with a high number of Native American students were given top priority in the selection process.