Oh the irony of this article in regards to my week. My husband is a PE and basketball coach and I am a former PE and volleyball coach. In our eight years of knowing one another (and working at our respective jobs) we have spent countless hours in emergency rooms with each other due to ankle sprains and knee injuries incurred during our work day. But last week's events took the cake. My husband was teaching 6th graders how to punt during their football unit, so he was the Lucy to the students' Charlie Brown. All of a sudden he heard a "hey Coach, look out!" And what did he do? Looked straight up at the kid who was calling his name....and BOOM! A football thrown by a 6th grader hit him square between the eyes. It was his very own Marcia Brady moment. Luckily there is nothing broken but he does have a mild concussion.

My middle and high school had us use Nerf balls for dodgeball and I hated those stupid things. No velocity, they couldn't go fast no matter how hard you threw, and it was too easy for the other person to catch the ball.

The radio show host Bubba the Love Sponge calls this part of the pussification of America.

At the elementary school where I did my internship at had a "no ball" at recess rule. They said too many kids fought over the balls and threw them at each other.

Just a comment on your update - as a teacher, I'm thinking they probably can't just recess in the gym because the gym is a classroom being used most of the time.

You can't hold recess in the gym because the gym teacher has classes to run at the same time. At least that's how it works at our school.

And, like...open recess isn't usually done at middle school anyway (at least the one I work at or the ones I know about). It's gym class. I'm kind of surprised they have a "recess." Middle school kids at a "recess" are mean as shit, and it's not surprising they would take away "hard balls." You can still have a ton of fun with the nerf ones, they fly the best anyway. We had to ban footballs (not in gym) when teachers took kids outside on nice days because kids kept wanting to tackle, and then somebody broke a teacher's window with one. To me, this article is not that surprising.

When I wasin high school I got hit on the pubic bone by a raquetball. If you've ever seen one of them they're fairly hard and you basically hit them as hard as you can.

It was not pleasant. I accused the girl of trying to break my lady bits. But after two minutes of me thanking my lucky stars I'm not a guy we went back to playing.

Maybe they just made people tougher in those days...
Lol

They probably can't have recess in the gym because gym class is going on... just sayin'

Thank you! i grew up in Port Washington and went to Weber as a child. There were 300 kids in a grade when I was young and there are more kids now. That's gotta be about 1,000 kids. 1) None of the gyms can legally hold the number of kids who'd be at recess and 2) there are gym classes in the gym because each of those 1,000 kids is required to take a 2-3 period/week gym course every year until graduation. This whole post is unresearched word vomit.

We see stories like these more and more, and they make my blood boil and me shake my head. But I cannot help but wonder how much we are responsible for behavoirs and rules like this. I have to think that SOME of this has to do with a fear of being sued, I think a lot of decisions like this come from a place of fear. Quite honestly, as someone who has worked in summer camp and after school programs for years - I cannot be mad at that. MOST parents understand kids are kids, and kids get hurt and get in arguments. MOST parent. Unfortunately THOSE parents aren't the loudest ones.

I'm about 95% sure that that's the reasoning behind this. There are a lot of kids in a smaller area than usual, and people were getting hurt. It's only a matter of time before the wrong kid gets hurt. It's ridiculous, but parents sue schools for ridiculous things surprisingly often.

A few years ago, I knew a teacher who was being sued because she asked a student to rewrite his math homework because she couldn't find the answers. When he refused, she asked him to circle the answers, at least. When he refused again, she gave him a 0%. The parents sued her. What were they suing over, anyway? What damages could that single 0% on 1 homework cause?

A parent tried to come after me, saying that I was making up stories to get her son in trouble. He beat up another student in front of me, and I sent him to the office. The principal was so afraid of getting sued by the mother that she let him go. A few months later, he stole another student's crutches and beat the tar out of him with them. After that, he picked up a textbook and threw it at a substitute's head. He was never suspended or given a detention for any of it, because the principal knew that his mother would sue.

I'm pretty sure that the school doesn't hate fun. They just hate the idea of getting sued more than they like fun.

Huh, wonder what that mom's gonna do when the parents of one of the kids her son viciously beats half to death decides to formally charge him with assault.

You said "Hard balls"
heh heh hehehehehehehehe

I said it like eleventy times! hahaha

Ban all the things! I'm going to ban dining room chairs, I stubbed my toe on one this morning and FUCK it hurt.

BAN THEM ALL

My son tripped as a toddler on the bottom rung and broke his wrist. Ban them! ;-)

We used to play Florida ball! A particularly devious form of full contact gym basketball played with medicine balls. No one died, and we probably should have!

When I was a kid recess and gym classes were all staggered by grade, so there's a good chance that recess can't be held in the gym because another class is using it. Plus if recess was held in the gym then the kids could pretty much only play ball and I'm hoping there's still other outdoor activities such as jungle gyms, hopscotch, and just plain playing outside with your friends. If the outdoor space is too crowded to really play sports then the ban may not be so unreasonable after all.

It's a middle school. Kids that age don't usually do that kind of stuff, at least when their friends are around.

I got hit square in the face with a football once and it didn't do me any CABBAGES cabbages everywhere. Just a joke there, I was fine. Little bit sore for a day or two. I do hope this school will be enforcing a minimum distance between students at recess to ensure there's no games of tag (a running child may trip you know) and also issuing full body bubble wrap as the students leave the classroom.

Shhhh you're giving them ideas!

don't joke like that....the aids at my sons school don't let anyone run or touch anyone at recess. However, they are only on duty for 2 of the three recess breaks. Teachers watch them for one recess and tell them to run like the wind and chase to their hearts content:)

So I did a little more reading about this, and it looks like there's more to the story than meets the eye. Apparently this measure is only temporary and it's because there's a construction project going on right now, so the recess area is quite a bit smaller than usual. Because of that, they're banning the use of hard balls in the smaller, outdoor area, but kids can still play with hard balls in the gym, which is larger.

http://www.newsday.com/long...

On one of the other news sites, someone who was at the Board of Ed meeting where this was decided said that the temporary nature of the measure and the reasons for it were made clear at that time, but apparently the news outlets missed that part of the story.

see above madame!

Thanks I knew there had to be more to this story I was just too lazy to look it up.

"If you can't dodge a wrench, how are you gonna dodge a dodgeball?"

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I spent my whole childhood trying to play sports despite having double vision and no depth perception. It was fun, damn it. Well worth two broken noses, a few dislocated thumbs, and six broken toes, because honestly, I could get those walking.

Funny enough, mom put me in sports to improve my hand-eye coordination.

jesus! i was drinking coffee and then I read that last line and lost it!!!

Hey I'm a klutz. I fell, got hit by balls, couldn't catch - but i had FUN. It was hilarious and I learned the fundamentals. And we made up games as we went along - keep away and freeze ball tag. And none of us were fat, none of us were glued to electronics. I wouldn't trade that for the world.

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When I was a kid I was a walking accident. I broke my ankle & wrist, shattered my elbow, blew out my knee...not to mention all the various scrapes and bruises. I wanted to climb higher, run faster, hit harder, and play better than any boy and dammit I did. Of course now that I'm old I had to stop running because my knee is shot and I know it's going to rain when my elbow aches but the memories, oh the memories!

I've got a lower back that gives me grief and a bad left knee...and a not very good right knee...and a bad left shoulder....I'd do things a bit differently but I'd still take chances.

I wanna print this out.

Welp, time to start throwing rocks then.

YAY! Rock time!

I was "that kid" with a propensity for receiving stray balls in the face. I hated sports. I was accident prone. I survived. I have no paralyzing fear of my daughter getting smacked in the face with a dodgeball on occasion. If she is afraid to get hit, she'll do what mommy did and avoid the game. Sports are such an integral part of growing up, my sister is training for Olympics and on a full ride to Chicago U... Where will America find its athletes if they ban athleticism over a few bumps and bruises?

I took a baseball to the nose when I was 7, which made it so that I can barely breathe from one nostril, and I still think kids should play catch. Teachers should be trained to look for signs of concussion for when kids get hit in the head, and we should take minor injuries as par for the course.

Pam Oliver survived a ball to the face, i'm sure these snowflakes can

I'm also a clumsy kid and got hit in the head with balls a lot. I have to admit, I still tense up if I'm in a field or park near people playing with balls.

But yeah, banning balls seems like overkill. When a kid in my school broke her arm playing red rover (I think that happened in every school ever at some point, right?), they banned red rover...they didn't ban all games.

That said, I do have a bias against hardballs (that one hurt the most) but otherwise, my injuries were minor and the embarrassment was the worst part of it anyway.

I was a high school athlete and in the course of 4 years playing EVERY YEAR someone broke something. I personally (not intentionally) broke the same girls wrist and the next year her rib (in slow pitch softball no less). They didn't ban sports (or me from them). For me it's the same concept. Kids sometimes get hurt. I remember recess being a choice, sometimes I played dodge ball or on the monkey bars (where many kids hurt themselves...daily). And some days I read a book. Getting banged up is the fun of being a kid (and learning not to do stupid stuff twice and to throw a ball too hard etc.)

What's a climber? Like a jungle gym?