Toadvine Blog

If Physical Education at your school consists of a whistle and 40 minutes of free time, you could be depriving young children of reaching critical developmental milestones and the opportunity to excel academically.

Researchers with Project SPARK (Sports, Play and Active Recreation for Kids) experimented with equipment items of varying sizes, shapes, weights and textures to determine if they could foster greater inclusion, activity, and enjoyment during school PE classes in the students. Equipment in each school's physical education program was found to be a critical component of a quality physical education, not only because recreational supplies needed to be provided in sufficient quantities for students to participate, but also because the PE equipment was helpful in differentiating instruction, increasing the levels of student participation and their enjoyment of PE. Adequate and diverse recreational supplies and equipment for PE classes were also proven to build self-confidence.

The study also revealed the benefits of having age-appropriate equipment and its effect on several other non-health related outcomes such as:

• teamwork - culture building and collaboration
• retention - when students enjoy PE more they participate at higher levels and want to be in school
• academic achievement - SPARK research also shows that students spending more time in SPARK PE and less time in the classroom will do as well or better with standardized test scores.

Is your school prepared with a variety of age-appropriate, visually appealing PE equipment that will keep your school-age kids stimulated and engaged? If you need some ideas to get started, click here. If it's time to bump up or begin your school's PE supply closet, we will be happy to help your school develop a supply of equipment for any size budget.

With kids out of school and vacations on the horizon, summertime brings a host of activity and a lot of hours to fill. For any parent with children at home this summer, you can be sure there is time for a lot of fun with friends, time spent at the pool, and outdoor sports taking place that fuel the ever exploding energy tank kids seem to have. But in an instant, when that activity starts to fade, the very predictable "I'm bored" phrase comes roaring out.

But there is a solution. A group of amateur sports enthusiasts have found a way to revive many old traditions and transform them into something recognizable, but completely different. You have probably never heard of most of these new "sports," but they are catching on as subcultures around the globe are organizing and promoting their uniqueness.

Kronum

If you want to play Kronum, all you need is a circular field, roughly 70 yards across, a lot of stamina, and the ability to constantly swivel your head. Players come at you from every angle, and where you are on the field determines the amount of points you score by throwing the ball into either the mouth of the goal or one of the five crown "rings" lining the top of each one. This fast paced and challenging summer sport morphs a little rugby with the ranks of competitive soccer.

Quidditch

This co-ed sport is played with a mixture of unique element from rugby, dodgeball, and tag. Seven people make up a quidditch team who play with brooms between their legs at all times. Three chasers score goals worth 10 points each with a volleyball called the quaffle. The ball advances down the field by running it, passing it or kicking it. Each team has a keeper who defends their goal and two beaters who use dodgeballs to disrupt the flow of the game by knocking out the other players. Any player hit by the bludger (dodgeball) is out of play until they touch their own goal. Each team also has a snitch runner, a neutral athlete who uses any means to avoid capture. The snitch is worth 30 points and its capture ends the game.

Road Tennis

It's not totally official, but Barbados has been claiming this sport as its official inner-city neighborhood sport for years. Road tennis requires a long stretch of pavement, a table tennis net, paddles and a handball. Dating back 80 years, this sport has a rich history, now alluring veterans and new comers alike. With an outdoorsy pingpong feel, this sport will fill a void in your outdoor sporting regimen.

Circle-Rules Football

If you never really wanted to use your yoga ball when attempting yoga, this sports gives you a chance to break it out of the closet and actually have some fun with it. In Circle-Rules Football two teams head toward the same goal trying to score with a humongous sphere that's been known to bounce uncontrollably and without reason.

Blind Soccer

Yeah. That's right. Players in this game are actually playing by the official soccer rules, but with a face shield that covers their eyes. Players navigate a small field based on shouted instructions from the bench. A ball bearing inside the soccer ball also helps in echolocation. A skilled blind soccer player dribbles the the ball without it ever coming off of his foot. It may sound crazy dangerous, but if you think you need to be able to see to play soccer, watch these players in action. You have to "see it to believe it."

You don't have an "official" team to strike up most of these games, just a knowledge of the rules and a strong desire to be creative and spontaneous. So if your kids are moping around looking for something to do, check out the details on these creative twists on traditional sports and knock out summertime boredom.

A search on the internet for bleacher safety will bring up multiple attorney listings and assistance for bleacher related injuries. Families today are exposed to unsafe spectator seating in a variety of settings and injuries relating to these accidents continue to call attention to the need for accelerated safety measures.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) examined bleacher injury associated data from 1991-1999 and revealed that there were an average of 19,100 bleacher-related injuries that were treated in the emergency room. In the year 1999 alone, 22,100 injuries were treated in the ER. Of those injuries 6,100 of them resulted from a fall from or through the bleachers onto the surface below. Because of the severity of these incidents, it is essential for organizations and schools to develop a plan to inspect, repair and maintain their seating systems to prevent incidents like these.

At Toadvine Enterprises, safety is a priority and because we believe in keeping your establishments safe, we have developed a maintenance and safety inspection program for all of your indoor and outdoor seating and equipment. Our Vine & Branch program offers manufacturer certified service technicians to ensure the safety of your seating. Here are some of the services our team will provide in order to keep your facility safely maintained:

• A thorough visual inspection of your facility and/or designated equipment.

• A full listing of defective equipment or upgrade requirements.

• A written report will be provided to you upon completion of the inspection, noting any safety and/or standard violations, and recommendations for corrective action.

We perform annually-required maintenance inspections on all equipment and seating and yearly contracts that work around your needs. Please contact Ben Toadvine: ben@toadvine.com or Matt Roberts: mroberts@toadvine.com or use our online form to request a regular maintenance check regarding the safety of your facility seating. Toadvine is happy to assist you in maintaining the safety of your facility and your family.

From the moment many children enter the arena of athletics they are pummeled with intense pressure to perform, improve, and outshine. In fact, as we learned in our last blog, intense pressure from parents and coaches can lead to several outcomes, including continually feeding the drive to excel by pouring more money into the pot with additional training and instruction. Some athletes tank under the stress and quit sports altogether, leaving behind thousands of invested dollars and oftentimes, a parent's dream of college recognition.

That competition doesn't end at the college level. In fact, it only heats up. If your child is tenacious enough and talented enough to make it to the college level, you will enter a whole new realm of competition as your child stands in line for one of only a very few college scholarship spots. If you think your star athlete is destined to capture the end-goal dream of a college scholarship, there are some realities about college athletic scholarships that might surprise you. Here are just a few.

Chances of Receiving College Sports Scholarships are Very Slim

According to a review in the Houston Chronicle, NCAA Division I scholarships were awarded to somewhere between .6% and 1.2% of high school athletes in the class of 2008. This total does not include NCAA Division II and NAIA schools, which would make the statistics higher, but only slightly higher. The end result of the review showed that your child's chance of earning a college athletic scholarship are 1in 300. Keep in mind that even if you make the recruiting cut, colleges actively recruit up to ten athletes for every one open spot so that they can freely evaluate and choose which athlete they believe is the best fit for their program.

College Sports Scholarships Aren't Free Rides

If your student athlete is fortunate enough to receive a scholarship, it will more than likely only be a partial scholarship. In a chart by BeRecruited, NCAA-mandated scholarship limits are listed. The allotted NCAA baseball scholarship limit for Division I is 11.7. Cross country/track and field is 12.6. These numbers don't even account for a whole team, so unless you are the hottest recruit on the planet, only a small portion of your college expenses will be paid for. You might get recruited, but that doesn't necessarily mean money toward college expenses.

Sports Scholarships Don't Necessarily Cover Four Years of College

Even if you are sold out to the idea that your child is stellar enough to snag a four-year scholarship to a big school, the harsh reality is this: scholarships at most institutions aren't four-year deals. They are one-year deals, renewed annually. In his article, "The Most Evil Thing About College Sports," Josh Levin states that most college recruits and sports fans don't realize that, "A university can yank that scholarship after one, two,or three years without cause. Coach doesn't like you? He's free to cut you loose. Sitting the bench? You could lose your free ride to a new recruit." So, even if you land a coveted scholarship spot on the team, there is no guarantee you will keep it.

Climbing the Scholarship Ladder Can End Before Recruiting

There are many minefields along the way when trekking the path to a college sports scholarship. With football brings the risk of severe concussions and injury. ACL and hamstring injuries can put athletes out for an entire season and sometimes permanently. What if your child burns out on playing sports and decides it's time to retire the cleats? What if your athlete gets recruited but receives a partial scholarship, leaving the remaining cost to the parent and finances don't allow for this kind of commitment, especially after so much money was spent getting to this point? Aspirations for that 1% chance of a Division I scholarship are dashed instantly.

The bottom line is this, although college sports scholarships are difficult to achieve, some athletes do receive them. With extreme talent and some aggressive marketing of that talent, your student athlete could possibly rise to the top and win an athletic scholarship, but you must be realistic if that is the goal. Dollars awarded and potential spots being recruited for are slim, but not completely impossible. But if you are a student athlete who just enjoys playing sports, follow the lead of one student athlete, Cole Cragin, a talented swimmer who beat the odds and earned a college scholarship, but at a cost.

Cragin encourages other athletes by saying: "Anyone who is competing in a sport and maybe doesn't have that chance to get to the next level, I'd give the advice to play anyway. If you love it, if you are learning how to be a determined, responsible person from playing a sport, play it for those reasons and it will still be worth it."

Image courtesy of topstep07 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Organized sports is now a trillion dollar business in this country. This is not an exaggeration. Marketers have even begun targeting participants "from the womb to the tomb," peddling products like Athletic Baby and Baby Goes Pro. Gymnasiums have also popped up for newborns with an eye on getting them to the pros, making personal trainers available for babies as young as six months.

Working class families have long seen sports as a ticket to the future, but the push to excel is a little overwhelming. From the time children can pick up a ball, parents see their child as competing against a multitude of other children for a very few select spots of recognition at the top. Getting into the scholarship pipeline has a much higher cost today than it ever has. Simply playing sports for your school doesn't cut it anymore. Parents are signing up for traveling teams, plopping down hundreds for expensive equipment, paying for personal trainers, elite sports camps, lodging expenses of food and hotels while traveling and sacrificing most, if not all, of their leisure time to attend and transport to games.

Dedicate blogger and statistics keeper, Stats Dad, kept track of the rising costs of organized sports involvement and found that the average sports playing youth spent $9,076 in 2010 and that number jumped to $11,704 in 2011.

In his book The Most Expensive Game in Town, Mark Hyman also explores and exposes the countless areas of commercialism and expenditure that takes place surrounding organized sports. As a parent who made many of the same mistakes he describes in his book, Hyman believes as parents we are becoming blinded to the insanity of spending, pushing and promoting our children up the ladder of success.

"We are sitting ducks. In other contexts, we are careful shoppers, bringing a coupon-clippers sensibility to how we buy and from whom. When the subject shifts from sports and our children, that equilibrium is suddenly lost. We have a hard time distinguishing between supporting them and feeding our runaway ambitions for them. The difference isn't apparent until long after the credit card has been swiped," Hyman believes.

Because most families making these lofty sacrifices aren't wealthy, a powder keg of pressure is unleashed on our very young children. That relentless drive from parents may be the reason 75% of children drop out of organized youth sports by age 13.

Although 7.7 million children played on a high school sports team last year and more than three million children between the ages of five and 19 signed up to compete with U.S. Youth Soccer, the national organization that oversees competitive travel soccer, the chances of making it to the pro level are extremely slim. Statistic Brain listed recently that the odds of a high school football player making it to the NFL as 1 in 6,000 and a shot at the NBA, even more unlikely at 1 in 10,000.

"Parents have the best of intentions for their kids," Hyman said. "They want their kids to be successful and succeed, but sometimes we just show it in the wrong way and have our heads down."

Reuters believes that parents should become aware of this growing problem and begin to lower their expectations. Becoming the next Albert Pujols is probably not a reality, but there are some steps families can take to make sports participation less of a strain financially and emotionally by doing the following:

• Choose your sport carefully. Weigh the investment of different sports. Golf clubs can cost more than $1,000. A soccer ball, cleats and shorts may only run $150. If your child ends up losing interest, you haven't lost a fortune.
• Barter Creatively. Negotiate club fees, barter the costs, pay installments, ask for discounted bulk sports purchases and ask to find out if sports leagues are willing to waive their fees.
• Forget the Shine. When it comes to gear, buy used. Play It Again Sports has great prices for gear that will save you a bunch of money if your child continues to pursue this sport. When you finish with gear you're not using, do the same. Sell it. Don't let it collect dust in the garage.

Although involvement and investment trends in organized sports are climbing, with a little awareness and a strong resolve it is possible for parents to say, "the buck stops here."

Image courtesy of Naypong / FreeDigitalPhotos.net