Rosy-cheeked students filled Wareham Middle School’s gymnasium Thursday morning, as they worked to learn team and partner strength exercises from Spartan Race coaches.

Wareham Middle School gym teacher Nichole Stahmer said she has an after-school running group, which runs 5k races at least once a month. Stahmer said the after-school students expressed an interest in running the Spartan Race in November, which got her thinking. She said she attended a training session in Connecticut, where she met Spartan Race Field Sales Coordinator Matt Persell, who agreed to come to the school to do a mini-training session for the students.

“They just started this year … working with students in the Spartan [Race],” Stahmer said. “We’re the first school in Massachusetts that they are doing it with. … We’re the third school [in the United States] to do it.”

The Spartan Race is a series of obstacle course races held in the United States that vary in degrees of difficulty, and length. Some are only three miles, while others are the length of a marathon.

Spartan Group Exercise Coach Jennifer Mitchell said the Spartan training is a good way to get children interested in outdoor physical activity, instead of sitting around at home, during the summer.

“[The students] are so focused on testing, and this is a way to release their energy, and get out and about,” Mitchell said. “Some people don’t want to do that anymore. They’re just not used to doing it.”

But the training is not only about the physical exercise.

“I came down … to get [the students] interested in working as a team, and building themselves up, building their friends up,” Mitchell said.

Stahmer also said she and fellow gym teacher Chris Perry had been talking for the past year about how to put up obstacle courses at the Middle School.

“We have the students sometimes … as a warm-up, create an obstacle course that you’re going to do in the gym. They love to do that, and see who can race and get through the obstacles, first.”

Stahmer said she and Perry would like to create a more structured obstacle course for the students. Bringing in the Spartan coaches, Stahmer said, was a way to try to generate interest among the students, so she could find grant money from both national organizations and local businesses to create the obstacle course.

“When we’re building an obstacle course, we’d like the students to take ownership of it, too, and be part of designing,” Stahmer said. “We are hoping that, if they take ownership of it, they would be really upset if somebody messed with it.”