This article made me sick to my stomach. What are we doing to our kids? What happened to education? I am interested in your reaction, maybe I am missing something here. Last weekend I saw a terrific special on ESPN called Black Magic, a four hour film on the African –American influence on the game of basketball. It was riveting, for me to sit for four hours and watch anything is an undertak [...]

Why is it that each generation of young coaches has to go in search of the Holy Grail, that place or person who has the answer? Over the past several months I have run into too many coaches starting out in the field or early in their career who are seeking the answer. The problem as I see it they do not yet know what questions to ask. They have not made enough mistakes yet to sharpen their skills. [...]

I came across this on the BBC Sport website. I have to admit it warmed my heart to see this. According to the country's sports minister Olivia Grange, Jamaica gets a jump on its rivals right from the start. I always talk about the triple T - tradition, talent and training. We have an extremely good school system. In our primary schools, physical education is mandatory, and we actually start compe [...]

This is the makeup of the coaches coaching our Olympic teams in Beijing - 22 are foreign born and 26 are US born. Nothing against foreign born coaches, but does this signify a crisis in coaching in the US? I think it does? Where are our coaches being trained? Where are they coming from? What is the career path to become a coach? We had better start training coaches and PE teachers or we will be in [...]

Last night I read an article that will appear in the New York Times Sunday Magazine on Sunday May 11 called “The Uneven Playing Field” by Michael Sokolove. It is an excerpt from a book called “Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against The Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sports.” When I read the article last night I was taken aback. My first reaction was shock, then [...]

Last night my daughter’s best friend got married, it was really fun. At the reception dinner there was a lady sitting next to my wife who had just retired after thirty years of being a middle school PE teacher here is Sarasota. This lady really got it, she graduated from Ball State when there was a curriculum to prepare teacher how to teach. She said she was appalled at the young teachers co [...]

You ask who is Charlie Mattison? Charlie is a friend of Steve Myrland in Madison, Wisconsin. Charlie is a veteran PE teacher who is very passionate about what he does. At present Charlie is in Bagdad serving with the Wisconsin National Guard. Here are a few thoughts from a letter he wrote in response to Steve sharing with him some ridiculous mindless stuff presented at the Wisconsin State PE confe [...]

A friend of mine sent me the following editorial from the Los Angeles Times.Tag‹you're illegal!Banning 'contact' or 'chase' games so neither students' skin nor psyche can be bruised is silly. Stop the coddling!October 28, 2006THE LIST OF WAYS in which children's skin and psyche can be forever bruised is apparently endless these days: dodge ball, kickball, any gam [...]

This was sent to me by Will Kirousis and a comment was posted on the blog - The North Attleboro (town in south east MA just north of the Rhode Island border) school department has decided there will be NO tag or other UNSTRUCTURED games played during recess or gym class to “reduce the odds of lawsuit as a result of injury”.In many ways this summarizes the whole problem. The other day I [...]

That was the heading of an article in our local paper. The main goals were to get the &ldquomore sophisticated&rdquo students of today excited bout taking PE because it is no longer required after sixth grade. They took away the requirement to allow more time to prepare for the FCAT test, another standardized test instituted by another Bush to test academic performance. The gist of the article is [...]