The schoolyard in Toronto, Canada, is safe again, thanks to the quick action of a school principal who has banned the dangerous weapon of ... soccer balls!
Before you deride the news as yet another example of school bureaucracy gone mad, won't you think of the children? They're an absolute terror when weaponized with hard balls:
Students at an east-end Toronto school are being told to leave their soccer balls — and other hard balls — at home.
The principal of Earl Beatty Public School banned the balls this week after a parent recently suffered a concussion from being hit in the head with a soccer ball.
The principal, Alicia Fernandez, banned hard balls, claiming they're dangerous. "Kids were coming in complaining of injury, or being scared," she said. [...]
Students can bring sponge or other soft balls to play with, but soccer balls, footballs, baseballs and even tennis balls are not allowed for safety reasons.
Seriously it's elastic and full of air and weighs something like a pound. How could that cause concusion. It certainly isn't a hard ball.
It takes very little to give a concussion, the head impact from something like a soccer ball can cause the brain to take a pretty decent rebound inside your skull. It's highly unlikely to be lethal though, even for a kid.
That doesn't mean balls should be banned in schools though, it means the parent should be paying attention to his/her surrounding when on/near the field, just like they teach the kids to do. (I remember getting scared out of my wits in jr high with horror stories about a kid scalped by a discus).
They'll rename the place Wolfland, which will go down well with the Greens and animal-first people.
And thanks to Global Warming, by this time the winter will be less severe.
Go Canada! (for now)
Where I work whenever an accident occurs somebody has to fill in an accident assesment form. One of the questions is "What should be done to prevent similar accidents in future?".
Note that it doesn't say "Should any thing be done...." or "Could anything be done..." it starts from the assumption that not only can something be done, but it must be done. And why? Because the organisation are trying to cover their own butts.
Can you imagine if the motor vehicle didn't already exist and somebody invented it today? It would never make it to the roads because of all the risk assesments that would have to be carried out.
I've been hit right in the face with glasses on by a soccer ball kicked at full speed.
Hurt like hell and made my cheek and brow swell up where my glasses dug in to my head, but other than that... nothing. No bruising after the swelling went down or anything.
Might as well just put kids in to their own private bubbles.
Apparently, the school has a very small yard, a wide variety of ages represented amongst pupils ranging from Kindergarten to grade 8 and there have a been a few injuries. The school has banned pupils from bringing their own "hard" balls in *temporarily* while a solution can be found.
Maybe this is just a principal that, whilst appearing a little over-cautious is simply taking a sensible step to prevent further injuries in the face of complaints from parents. Rather than an encroachment on the kids' human rights to life, liberty and to injure themselves by the health and safety Nazis.
Does no-one (skim) read to the end of an article anymore? What am I saying? Of course not. This is the internet.
Also soccer balls are not really any harder than a standard kick ball and I do not know what you replace a tennis ball with that would work.