JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas (March 20, 2025) –The Mission and Installation Contracting Command hosted its first group wellness event in recent history. Termed Wellness Wednesday, the event kicked-off March 19 with an in-person and virtual walking contest.
Wellness Wednesday is a monthly event where the MICC Command Team has committed to hosting a series of health and wellness events around the MICC footprint to promote teambuilding and esprit de corps while enhancing the contracting organization’s readiness, health and resilience.
Command Sgt. Maj. JennyAnne Bright, MICC’s command sergeant major co-hosted the event with Clay Cole, MICC’s deputy commander.
“Once a month we will have our Wellness Wednesday events hosted by the command team to focus on fitness and wellness,” Bright said.
“Today we are walking. Future events may include demonstrations on yoga, lifting weights, eating better or checking your blood pressure. We want to turn wellness into a verb by making overall fitness an actively sought goal.”
The group began their wellness journey by launching MICC’s 250 Walk-It-Out-Wednesday, the weekly walking contest. The challenge is for MICC personnel to log 250 cumulative walking or running miles each Wednesday before the Army’s birthday commemoration on June 14. Over 50 personnel attended the event in person, while over 27 teams of up to five personnel each, across the MICC enterprise, registered and logged miles for the initiative.
“MICC’s 250 Walk-It-Out-Wednesday helps us demonstrate the command’s focus on fitness while acknowledging the Army’s 250-year legacy of fighting and winning our Nation’s wars,” Bright said, noting that June 14, 1775, the date the Continental Congress authorized the enlistment of expert riflemen to serve the United Colonies, fell on a Wednesday.
“Each Wednesday is the opportunity for us to earn our miles. The goal is that by the second week of June, for the Army’s 250th birthday, we will collectively attain 250 miles; That is not just MICC headquarters, that is all of our 1,500 Soldiers and civilian professionals throughout the MICC organization.”
A subordinate command under the Army Contracting Command and Army Materiel Command, located in 30 offices spread around the Continental U.S., MICC personnel also enjoy a 250-year legacy of service as sustainers, the people responsible to conduct vital sustainment operations in support of the Army’s warfighters and mission partners.
The MICC workforce is encouraged to use part of their breaks or lunchtime on fitness and wellness. Personnel who want to spend a greater portion of their day working out must be enrolled in the command’s official health and wellness program to use administrative or excused leave. MICC’s Wellness Coordinator, Simba Gentry, said, “Employees and leaders should follow the MICC Civilian Fitness Program Command Policy Memorandum, CPM 600-13, located on the MICC Wellness MS Teams page. Civilian employees may use up to one hour per day, three hours per week—capped at 80 hours in a given calendar year—for
fitness.”
In his opening remarks, Cole welcomed attendees and thanked everyone for supporting MICC’s wellness efforts. Cole and Bright then led the group on a walk around the Historic Long Barracks; one lap is approximately half a mile. Some participants did one full lap, while Cole and others did four laps. Wednesday’s event lasted between 10 and 30 minutes depending on the walkers’ pace.
“The key here is to maintain health and fitness and get that mindset going,” Cole said.
Having retired from the Army after serving in the Infantry and Army Contracting, Cole is now the senior civilian in the command; he admitted that focusing on fitness became less of a priority after his Army retirement. His goals for the organization are to encourage fitness and camaraderie. “It is important that we keep our fitness up and just have a good time while we are doing it.”
STORY UPDATE: Due to overwhelming interest and participation in the initiative, the MICC command team changed the organization goal on March 26 to 250 collective steps weekly until the Army's 250th Birthday commemoration.
Headquartered at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, Texas, the Mission and Installation Contracting Command consists of about 1,500 military and civilian members who are responsible for contracting goods and services in support of Soldiers as well as readying trained contracting units for the operating force and contingency environment when called upon. As part of its mission, MICC contracts are vital in feeding more than 200,000 Soldiers every day, providing many daily base operations support services at installations, facilitating training in the preparation of more than 100,000 conventional force members annually, training more than 500,000 students each year, and maintaining more than 14.4 million acres of land and 170,000 structures.
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