The games of Recess/P.E

[DirtySouth]

I was reading the newspaper and there was an editorial about the state of P.E. in elementary schools. A lot of schools are now disreguarding P.E, with some electing to eliminate it all together. In the schools that still have a period for P.E, they're watering it down considerably by eliminating games deemed "too violent", such as dodge/war ball and football, and getting rid of any games that had winners and losers so they could 'boost kid's self esteme". It would really be a travesty if P.E dissappears as it's the only time kids can have some physical activity during the mostly sedentary school day, plus a lot of friendships can be formed on the playground. Our coach sometimes gave us 'free days" where we could do anything, but mostly he started various organized games for use to play. A lot of the real memorable games were:

Kickball: this is self explanatory. For some odd reason, we sometimes played this inside the gymn, which pretty much equalized everyone as the really good kickers couldn't kick the ball far. Strangely, no one ever broke any of the windows.

VolleyBall/Newcomb: another common game. I never really cared for it, so I tried to avoid it as much as possible.

Steal-the-Bacon: A favorite of mine. 2 teams line up on opposite walls, and a small item was placed in the middle. The opposing member of each team had to run to the item, try to grab the item, and make it back to their wall. It was a pure mind game, which made it fun. If the other person made it to the wall without getting tagged, their team got a point, if he gets tagged, the tagger's team gets a point, if anyone is touched before the item is grabbed, the team of the person touched gets a point. This lead to bouts of attempted fake-outs to try to get the other person to touch you.

Dodge/War Ball: I was always confused about which was which. One involved a bunch of people lined up in the middle, and groups of people on both sides of the line get balls and try to hit the people in the line, and the other one was 2 teams of people get on each side of a line and try to hit the people on the opposing team. The latter was the one was played. I believe THAT was called "war ball", but our coach called it dodge ball.

Octupus: one of my favorites. A person (or more) were chosen to be "it", and everyone else lined up against the wall. The object was to make it to the opposite wall without getting tagged by the "it" person. If you get tagged, you had to sit down indian-style in the place where you were tagged and become part of the "Octopus". You couldn't move, but you could pivot and stretch your arms out to tag the remaining people. Of course the game got harder and harder the more people got tagged out and became part of the Octopus, and all the while still dodging the people that were it. This kept going until only 1 or more people were left, and then they were it.

TetherBall: another common game where a ball was tied to a pole, usually with rope, or a leather string. 2 people faced off, and start batting the ball back and forth, and the object was to get the ball to wrap around the pole in the opponents direction. This game lead to a lot of bruised faces due to poor hand-eye coordination of many people that caused them to miss the ball completely.

Four-Square: Another of my favorites. A large square is drawn, then it is divided into 4 equal size smaller squares. The squares were numbered from 1 to 3, with the 4'th square being called the "king" square. People then occupy each square, then the person in the king square serves the ball (usually played with a kickball). 4-Square is basically 4 player ping-pong. The person in the king square serves to square 2, then he can serve it to anyone. The person whose square the ball lands in has to serve it to another person. This goes on until the server hits the ball out of bounds, or the servee misses the ball after it hits his square. Anytime during the game when a person has the ball, he can call "Battle". The next person he serves it to has to serve it back to the caller, and they battle each other until one loses. The point of course was to make it to the King Square, but anyone can be eliminated, and the king square occupant scores a point for each elimination reguardless if he caused it himself or not.

There were other games that were played, but those are the ones I remember best. While I really enjoyed P.E, there were 2 activities my school did that sometimes had me dreading it

Square Dancing: I don't know if we did this because our coach was a farmer, or it being a requirement of the Jefferson county school system, or it was just an Alabama thing, but for 6 weeks (back when grading periods were 6 weeks long), we had to learn Square Dancing. We had to pare up with students of the opposite sex and square dance. This was during the ages when MOST kids thought peop,le of the opposite sex were 'icky", and had cooties and whatever. Then the coach would put on old worn-out records of square dance music, and we danced...or attempted to. Even though it's been over 15 years since this, I still unfortunately remember the calls to a lot of the songs, even the dreaded "Cotton-Eyed Joe".

Presidential Physical Fitness Test: This was when you had to do various physical activities such as push-ups, chin-ups, mile run, etc. I hated this because back then, I was in absolutely terrible shape (I was thin due to fast metabolism, but did no excersize whatsoever). I always came in near the bottom of the charts of almost all activities (surprisingly, as bad as I was, there were people a lot worse than me) and was almost always terribly out of breath. I'm in a lot better shape now, but back then, I hated any strenous activity. Awards were given to all the students that beat the national average, and had the highest rankings in the school. Most of the time, it was the same 2 or 3 people everytime.

I really hope that P.E isn't abolished completely, as I think it's as important as academic learning.

Edit: I pressed the wrong button, sorry dude! - Reno

[Joust Williams]

Well this is fantastic news!
not.

The obesity in the country has gotten out of control because of things like "eating so-and-so every so often is actually GOOD for you" and "PE isn't that important"

Soon it will be "cigarettes can boost your metabolism!", if it isn't here already. blah.

Kickball was the best in elementary school.

[gameoverDude]

I loved Kickball (and another variant called Mat Ball).

Mat Ball is generally played indoors, and you're allowed to cram a lot of runners on a mat (here, you don't have to go just because the ball has been kicked). Kicking the ball into the ceiling is an automatic out. My school's gym had a US Flag hanging from the ceiling. Hitting the flag with a kicked ball was a serious no-no and was good for THREE outs, causing an immediate side change.

My favorite variation of Dodge Ball is Doctor Dodge Ball- if you're hit, you don't get put out of the game but you're just frozen until your team's "Doctor" can get you and bring you back to your end zone. Chants of "Get the Doctor!" are pretty common whenever the other team's doctor attempts a rescue. Hitting the doctor is kind of like taking the Queen out in chess- literally giving you an advantage.

I found Volleyball to be boring & tasteless myself. The fact that I couldn't play it for shit didn't help. It wins the NITA (National Insomnia Treatment Association) Award.

Competitive sports should stay in PE. Those people who want to water down PE are being lame. Do they want students to do nothing but Ring-Around-the-Rosie and similar fare?

PE is an important course- I don't get why they would want to abolish it. What is stupid is that some schools (well, at least the one I went to) have it only one year out of the whole four.

[Technosphile]

I cherished P.E. as a boy because it let me cut loose and escape from the shackles of class for awhile. Our school P.E. teacher was Coach Chavez, one of the coolest people I have ever known in my life. He taught us the value of competition and kept us from getting fat. I don't have any children, but if my son's school was eliminating Physical Education and denying him that kind of relationship with a teacher, I'd pull him out of that school immeadiately.

A game we used to play in P.E. was called Crab Soccer or something. You get on all fours with your butt to the ground and this enables the most powerful kick a human being is capable of. Your entire leg goes into the kick and you connect with the bottom of your foot, so imagine how high the big rubber ball we used would fly! I once tried to do a bicycle kick while playing this game and landed across my neck pretty hard. That ruled.

I wish I could be a kid again.

-Tech

[DarkCrow676]

I loved dodge ball. I remember whenever we had free days back in 8th grade we would always join the 6th grade dodge ball game and just lay waste on everyone. Good times, but sadly I hear dodge ball is not allowed anymore at my school, but it doest affect me these days.

[Regus]

I started a thread about dodge ball way back on tnl 1.0. I pretty much posed this question:

If you could round up 30+ guys, would you be willing to play a game of dodge ball?
I can remember kids being brutal at dodgeball, just imagine how a bunch of 20+ year olds play.


Dodgeball is just one of those perfect games were any one could be good at. Nobody ever thought "man, I suck at this", because whenever you got hit, it was always a fluke, a random occurance, hell, you always shook it off and said "I'll get em next round!".



Anyway, I agree that cutting back on PE in elementary school is a huge mistake, for all the obvious reasons. And what's with this getting rid of games that have winners and losers? Yeah, thats a great way to prepare them for the real world.

[Reno]

Octupus: one of my favorites. A person (or more) were chosen to be "it", and everyone else lined up against the wall. The object was to make it to the opposite wall without getting tagged by the "it" person. If you get tagged, you had to sit down indian-style in the place where you were tagged and become part of the "Octopus". You couldn't move, but you could pivot and stretch your arms out to tag the remaining people. Of course the game got harder and harder the more people got tagged out and became part of the Octopus, and all the while still dodging the people that were it. This kept going until only 1 or more people were left, and then they were it.

We had this but it was different at our school. We called it Bulldog and instead of having people sit down, EVERYONE who was tagged was allowed to run around trying to tag the remaining people. Of course, it was never tag at all. Most of the time we played full contact tackle, but it was still a fun game.

[Eight One]

I loved Kickball (and another variant called Mat Ball).

Mat Ball is generally played indoors, and you're allowed to cram a lot of runners on a mat (here, you don't have to go just because the ball has been kicked). Kicking the ball into the ceiling is an automatic out. My school's gym had a US Flag hanging from the ceiling. Hitting the flag with a kicked ball was a serious no-no and was good for THREE outs, causing an immediate side change.

My favorite variation of Dodge Ball is Doctor Dodge Ball- if you're hit, you don't get put out of the game but you're just frozen until your team's "Doctor" can get you and bring you back to your end zone. Chants of "Get the Doctor!" are pretty common whenever the other team's doctor attempts a rescue. Hitting the doctor is kind of like taking the Queen out in chess- literally giving you an advantage.

I found Volleyball to be boring & tasteless myself. The fact that I couldn't play it for shit didn't help. It wins the NITA (National Insomnia Treatment Association) Award.

Competitive sports should stay in PE. Those people who want to water down PE are being lame. Do they want students to do nothing but Ring-Around-the-Rosie and similar fare?

PE is an important course- I don't get why they would want to abolish it. What is stupid is that some schools (well, at least the one I went to) have it only one year out of the whole four.

Cool stuff.

One Dodge ball variant I remember playing was called "Indian dodge ball." (I don't why, it just was). Pretty much the same as OG dodge ball, except you had as many as five people on the outside and up to five balls being hurled at any one time.

I find it sad that the importance of teaching a lifestyle of fitness is no longer considered important. Had I known then what I know now. (or even in high school), I would be in 25x better shape than I am now.

A measure like this might give the rest of the world the impression that Americans are lazy and not too concerned with the well-being of our younger people.

[stormy]

Butter Ball ownz

[Scourge]

We had this game called scatter where everyone started in this circle in the middle of the gym and then the coach blew the whistle and everybody ran for the 6 balls that were around the gym. If you got a ball, you hit someone dodgeball style with it, if you got hit you got sent to the "out" circle. If you caught a ball in flight, the thrower was out. Last one standing was the winner.

I don't know what rules anyone else had for dogeball, but we had a couple of kinds: one where 6 or so guys would line up against a wall and one guy would try to peg them with the ball. If you were against the wall and caught the ball, you got to go throw. The other type, the gym was split in half and one side went against the other. Once one team was completely eliminated the other team was the victor.

And we had this game called Line Soccer which was cool. Say there were 50 people in your gym class. 25 would line up by one wall of the gym and 25 would line up on the other side. Then the coach would go down the line counting people off up to 7 or whatnot. Coach would put the ball in the center of the gym and then call "5!" or whatever number and all the 5's would go out and the one's from one side of the gym would try to kick the ball through the line of kids on the other side of the gym. Then coach would call "2!" or whatnot, all the 5's would go back to their lines and the 2's would come after the ball. That was cool! Except when you got hit in the face.

Anybody else do stuff with parachutes? Our gym class would all get around a parachute holding on to the edge and then the coaches would put balls onto it and everyone would start pumping up and down with their arms to make waves and stuff. It was cool too.

--Scourge .