Recess roughhousing leads to restriction on playing tag

A Toronto Catholic elementary school has put a freeze on tag — and all other activities that involve physical contact — because students were roughhousing at recess and getting injured.

The kids at St. Luke, a kindergarten to Grade 8 school on Ossington Ave. north of Dundas St. W., were told at the start of November not to play touch tag or other activities that involve contact, an order that is still in place today.

“The game of tag they were playing was getting overly physical and rough,” said John Yan, spokesman for the Toronto Catholic District School Board, and included pushing, punching and tackling, and “they were not watching, they were blindly running over (other) kids. It was tag — but it was a rough form of tag.”

The schoolyard is also small — the property is 1.9 acres, but the actual play area just .74 acres — and with about 250 children out all at once, a lack of space adds to the problem, he said.

Two to three children were being injured each recess, he added, with some of the injuries including bleeding.

Even though one student was badly hurt last week, it wasn’t any one incident that led to the decision to hold off on tag, Yan said. “It was a series of incidents,” with some that involved filing insurance claims.

In recent years, Toronto principals have banned everything from balls to cartwheels to snowballs, all in the name of safety. They have also been criticized for coddling kids.

On Twitter Monday night, one parent complained about the St. Luke situation: “So tag and soccer are unsafe activities? What happened to allowing kids to play?”

On Tuesday, St. Luke students were allowed to start playing “ball tag” using a soft ball, and they’ve always been permitted to play soccer — but now, all but Grade 7 and 8 students must use a soft rubber ball, to lessen injuries should someone get hit.

The school has also put in a call for help to Toronto Public Health, which on Monday is sending in a nurse to meet with a couple of teachers and go over playground strategies and safety as part of its PALS program (playground activity leaders in schools).

The teachers in turn will train student leaders in Grades 5 and 6 in safer recess play, and once that happens tag will be reintroduced.

In an email to the Star, trustee JoAnn Davis said “nothing is banned,” but, given the injuries, “the principal is doing the very responsible thing of reviewing things and resetting boundaries to ensure no one else gets hurt . . . It is their role to ensure safety, so if an activity is thought unsafe they may review before allowing it again.”

Toronto Public Health did run a PALS program within the past couple of years at St. Luke, but it is not uncommon for a nurse to return to schools as needed, said Mary Louise Yarema, a health promotion specialist.

“Ideally, we like to train students who will be there in the next year or two, for sustainability,” she said, adding the “overall goal of the program is to increase physical activity” and about 100 schools in both the Toronto and Toronto Catholic boards are involved each year, about half of them repeat participants.

The program gives older students leadership skills. They learn games for groups, games with balls and rope, and how to adapt tag games for small spaces, “so you’re not going to do it at a running pace, but a walking pace,” she added.