Mike, loved your story and your perseverance!  You earned that patch many times over, then and now.

We had a similar program in Canada, that must have been a copy of the American one.  It was called "Participaction" or some thing like that.  IT was also a mandatory gym class thing.  I started it in grade 5 maybe? and being overweight and lazy at the time, I couldn't even get the bronze patch, but received a little "thanks for coming out" pin.  It made me mad, getting a bronze patch was not that hard, almost every other kid had at least that.  So the next year, I got my bronze patch.  Then two years after that (grade 8), (I had started playing sports in the meantime), I managed to get the Gold patch, and was so proud.  But I'll never forget the shame of the first year, realizing just how out of shape I was compared to the other kids.