For the past 15 years, Sarah Brubeck has taught physical education at her alma mater, Eagle Valley High School, and has been driven by her passion to create a lifelong love of health and fitness in her students. This October, Brubeck was honored for her work, being named the state’s high school physical education teacher of the year by SHAPE Colorado.

“It was a very humbling experience,” Brubeck said of winning the award. “I know that even within my own school, there’s so many dedicated and talented educators and even when I was there, getting the award, listening to the other recipients of awards — it was just humbling that I was able to be up there with some of the other great educators in the state.”

Like many other educators, Brubeck was first inspired by one of her own teachers to become one herself. For Brubeck, it was Kasey Stanish at Eagle Valley Middle School and “how she formed genuine relationships with students and how she always helped them be the best humans they could be.”

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However, when Brubeck started at Colorado State University following high school, she initially started studying physical therapy. Ultimately, it was both her participation in the program as well as a job teaching snowboarding at Beaver Creek that led her down the path to becoming a physical education teacher. 

“I started teaching snowboarding during college at Beaver Creek,” Brubeck said. “My mom had always told me she thought I’d be a great PE teacher, but it wasn’t until then that I realized I loved teaching sports to kids.”

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And in starting down the path of physical therapy, she “saw so many people who were making unhealthy choices as adults and it motivated me to encourage people to make healthy choices when they’re younger, in hopes that they continue that lifestyle throughout their future,” Brubeck added.

It’s this philosophy that has driven Brubeck’s career at Eagle Valley High School, not only as a physical education teacher but also as a coach for various sports including basketball, volleyball and track.

“Sarah cares greatly about her content and holds a high standard for kids to practice becoming lifelong movers,” said Drake Brown, a fellow teacher, coach and the wellness department chair at Eagle Valley High School. “Her passion for teaching PE is a breath of fresh air for anyone to be around. This is not just a job to her, it’s a lifelong passion that she teaches, coaches and also practices in her own life.”

In addition to advocating for the importance of physical activity to students’ brain development and academic achievement, Brubeck said that the best part of her job is helping students find success.

“It allows for students to find success in things that they never thought was possible, whether it’s a new sport or lifting a new weight or just being comfortable in the weight room, but I really enjoy watching them just be successful,” she said. “For some students, I think it’s the most successful part of their day and it’s a chance for them to find some joy and some success in something different than traditional academic subjects.”

This drive to help her students succeed is at the core of what Brubeck brings to the Eagle Valley community, according to fellow Eagle Valley wellness teacher Justin Brandt.

“Sarah is successful as a teacher because she has high standards of excellence for her students and is willing to do anything she can to get her students to that level. She is tremendously organized, knowledgeable, and focused,” Brandt said. “She is unique because she is still competing. She isn’t just fit to impress others with her physique. She is functionally strong so she can be a great athlete. She is teaching our student-athletes how to better their bodies to perform at their peak. Then she is doing the same. She lives out what she teaches.”

Similarly, Brown said that Brubeck’s ability to hold people accountable to high expectations benefits not only her students but her colleagues as well.

“She takes it personally when students fail to recognize their potential and works towards helping them become better in relentless fashion,” Brown said. “She does the same for her fellow teachers, holding us all accountable for being excellent teachers. You want to be better around her.”

Throughout her time at Eagle Valley High School, Brubeck has worked to extend this passion through various efforts in and out of the classroom. This included working to rewrite the district’s physical education curriculum — advocating for alignment across all grades K-12 as well as for more minutes of PE and more quality of instruction in the subject — as well as bringing unique opportunities to students, including archery.

Eagle Valley High School Principal Greg Doan said that this archery unit embodies the innovation that makes Brubeck successful as a teacher.

“She thinks creatively and puts in the effort to build things that will be engaging and transformative for students,” Doan said. “We now have an archery unit in the Lifetime Fitness because of Sarah’s drive and work to get the equipment and go through the training. I have observed the class and got to experience seeing students grow, develop and experience something that challenges some and highlights the skills of others.”

This unit has become one of Brubeck’s favorite units to teach because it reaches more students and showcases a different side of these students.

“It’s cool because the kids take it so seriously, they take the safety very seriously,” she said. “It’s fun because even a kid that doesn’t like to move that much is able to see success in something that’s totally different.”

With this most recent award and her work in the field, she hopes that she can help shed more light on the importance of physical education and bring more respect to the profession.

“There’s so many life skills that can be taught through sports and activities,” she added. “We teach way more than just movement, we teach life skills through movement.”

Brubeck was nominated for the award by fellow Eagle Valley physical education teacher, Nicole Mink. Mink said it was her “work ethic and the level of care she has for her students to be successful in their own way has profoundly positive impacts on their physical and mental health” that led her to nominate her colleague for the award.

For the wellness department and the high school, this award not only validates Brubeck’s hard work but also encourages her colleagues to do the same, Brandt said.

“This award means a lot to us at EVHS. We all support each other, lean on each other, and learn from each other,” Brown said. “It’s so great for us to see someone we work with every day be recognized for what they do; it brings us all up. In our wellness department, our motto is, ‘stay humble.’ Sarah embodies what it means to practice excellence through quiet confidence, and we all hold a higher bar for ourselves as a result.”

The value that Brubeck brings is something that Doan said is extended to everyone in the community.

“As an alumnus of Eagle Valley High School, she understands where our students come from and how to get the very best out of them. As a colleague, she upholds the highest standards of professionalism. As a coach and sponsor she gives back to her community so that students can experience what athletics have to offer,” he said.