Extra Mile is a fitness application for smartphones that encourages users to make smarter and healthier life choices. Created by 2006 Harding graduate Tyler Knight, Extra Mile connects with other fitness apps you have and keeps an ongoing log of activities you perform throughout your day. Based on how much activity you partake in, Extra Mile rewards users with points to redeem on its website.

Knight has decided to bring this app back home to Harding in the form of a competition.

“Tyler is putting on this competition between Harding’s social clubs not just to market his new business, but to help the Harding community as a whole in remembering to keep our bodies healthy and in shape,” senior Knights president Thomas Stafford said.

Through this competition, social clubs will compete using Extra Mile’s point system. Clubs will compete to earn the most amount of points, and the winners will receive a cash donation to the charity of their choice, an iPad mini for the club and “Harding’s Healthiest” T-shirts for every member.

Individual prizes will also be given to the male and female with the highest point totals at the end of the competition.

“Clubs will benefit from using Extra Mile because it will encourage students to be more active,” senior Ko Jo Kai president Lily Armstrong said. “The spirit of competition will bring individual clubs together.”

Through Extra Mile, Harding students will have opportunities to reward themselves for healthy and productive lifestyle changes.

“(Extra Mile) encourages its users to make the little decisions that help keep us healthy,” Stafford said. “For instance, taking the stairs or eating an apple instead of that mid-afternoon candy bar is rewarded.”