Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Saturday, April 28, 2007
Tag banned at La Crosse elementary school
 Students at Harry Spence Elementary play on the Jungle Gym during recess . Dick Riniker photo |
“You’re it!”
Two words you won’t hear on the playground at Harry Spence Elementary School in La Crosse. Students heard via an intercom announcement Thursday that tag and other “chase” games are banned on the playground.
Principal Nancy Sikorsky declined comment Friday, saying “This is not news, this is a safety issue, therefore I don’t have a comment.”
She also said that her school and others in the area have rules against playing tag on the playground but haven’t always enforced them. She declined to say what prompted the more stringent enforcement of the rule.
But Harvey Witzenburg, principal at Roosevelt Elementary and Coulee Montessori schools, said he banned tag in his former job at Jefferson Elementary and in his current job.
“I’ve seen too many injuries with tag,” he said. “I agree completely with the decision (at Spence).”
Witzenburg said tag often leads to confrontations and puts kids at risk for injuries from falls. He said he even saw one child break a collarbone many years ago.
He said district schools provide numerous other “excellent” play options on the playground, including kickball, foursquare, basketball and jump rope. Spence had a new $30,000 playground installed in May 2005, including a webbed climbing tower.
The bans on tag at local schools follow a national trend against the game and some others, such as dodgeball, that critics claim put children at too much risk for injury or social isolation.
Tag was named to the “Physical Education Hall of Shame” in a 1994 research paper by Neil F. Williams of the Department of Health and Physical Education at Eastern Connecticut State University.
“Elimination games like Tag or Simon Says are essentially self-defeating, because the students who are least skilled and fit are usually the first to be caught, banished, punished and embarrassed, and then given almost no opportunity to improve,” the study says.
Franklin Elementary School Principal Jerry Berns, who’s also district physical education director, said he respects other principals’ right to set their own policies on their playgrounds, but hasn’t banned it at Franklin. He said he doesn’t know of research to suggest tag is more dangerous than other playground games, and that banning it may actually backfire.
“In a sense (banning it) is kind of futile,” he said. “Kids are going to do it anyway when you’re not looking. Some things just come naturally to kids.”
Dan Simmons can be reached at (608) 791-8217 or dsimmons@lacrossetribune.com.
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