Advertisement We’d number off by twos and the unfortunate team would have to don the smelly, sleeveless wonders that nearly stood on their own.
But the jerseys distinguished the two teams, making it easier to identify your teammates during intense games of floor hockey and flag football.
We’d race up and down the gym floor smacking a small ball with plastic-faced sticks and we’d dive at one another, hoping to grasp a flag.
Physical exercise was masked by fun and usually friendly competition.
But, alas, the days of endless gym class floor hockey matches and flag football games are gone.
In an effort to promote lifelong fitness, the
La Crosse School District shifted its focus about 10 years ago from seemingly nonstop team sports to individual activities that teach wellness, nutrition and healthy living, said Jerry Berns, La Crosse School District supervisor of physical education and health.
“Research told us kids graduating from high school — 80 to 90 percent — probably never play another team sport,” Berns said. “We want to prepare kids for lifelong activities and to have them know the benefits of them.”
Inline skating, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, bicycling, yoga, archery, pilates, weight training, lifeguard training, officiating and kick boxing now accompany team units such as volleyball or softball.
Summer courses have students canoeing on local waterways and learning how to dance.
“Physical education has changed greatly in the last few years,” Berns said. “It’s become much more than fitness. It’s more lifelong learning.”
But while the La Crosse School District is taking measures to ensure student participation, many schools have been forced to cut back on physical education programs, citing fewer resources, competing academic demands and testing.
Enrollment of high school students in daily PE classes nationwide fell from 41.6 percent to
28.4 percent between 1991 and 2003.
These declines come at a time when childhood obesity in the United States is reaching epidemic proportions.
As a member of the Congressional Fitness Caucus, U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, D-La Crosse, has recognized that prioritizing physical and nutritional education in schools will help to combat the growing weight problem in children.
Kind has joined with Reps. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., and Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., to introduce the Fitness Integrated with Teaching Kids Act aimed at giving priority to physical education in public schools.
See Autumn, B-2
If passed, the act would add PE to the measures for determining accountability under No Child Left Behind.
It would measure states’ progress toward meeting a Centers for Disease Control-recommended national goal of 150 minutes per week in elementary schools and 225 minutes per week in middle and high schools, he said.
“Fortunately in Wisconsin and in our area we are doing a very good job,” Kind said. “Our area benefits from UW-L and the physical education department ... but it’s a hodgepodge around the country.”
Berns said La Crosse schools “meet or exceed” the state physical education expectations. One-and-a-half credits are required for high school students while middle and elementary school kids meet every other day.
Kind said by making physical and nutrition education part of the core curriculum, students and families will learn to make good, healthy choices.
“It all has to be reinforced throughout the child’s daily life,” he said.
Kind said a draft bill will likely leave committee hearings by the end of September and see the House floor sometime in October.
Autumn Grooms can be reached at (608) 791-8424 or agrooms@lacrossetribune.com.
