Ping-pong, ladder toss, cornhole and kan jam aren’t just for cookouts anymore: Students at Saugerties High School have enjoyed outdoor recreational activities indoors as a physical education unit this fall, with junior high students to follow early next year.
Mike Tiano is a physical education teacher at SHS and coaches both the boys’ varsity basketball team and varsity softball teams. He said the outdoors-indoors unit began during a resurgence of the COVID-19 virus when it was too cold to hold classes outside. Games like cornhole, where players attempt to toss a bean bag through a small hole, allowed for physical activity with social distancing.
“When COVID came back there was not a lot we could do because of mandates at the time,” Tiano said. “So we got a bunch of ping-pong tables and we said ‘Let’s look to do some cornhole and some of the others you can do while distancing from one another. And that’s how it turned into an indoor unit for us.”
The response was immediately enthusiastic, particularly as it involved a social component, even with social distancing.
“What we all noticed was the kids were receptive to just getting them back active and being able to be around their friends where they could play a game and could be socially distanced at the same time,” Tiano said. “(During remote learning) we were kind of stuck giving at-home assignments and not really being able to have them participate much except for being outside. So that was really the first step of getting back inside and the kids really responded well to it when we first introduced it.”
The unit was so popular that it’s continued ever since, and in the junior high has even led to the formation of a ping-pong — or table tennis — club.
“Ping-pong is probably the most popular of the activities to do,” Tiano said. “That meets in the wintertime a couple days a week, usually from January to March, and a teacher comes down and pulls out the ping-pong tables and lets the kids play.”
Also popular, though yet to yield a club, is cornhole.
“We all go to barbecues in the summertime and 4th of July and see these games around,” Tiano said.“Now the kids all know how to play and you see more and more of it out there.”
Kan Jam, as the name partly implies, involves teammates trying to deflect a flying disc into a large can, with points scored if the disc hits or enters the can. Ladder toss is also self-explanatory, with players throwing a pair of balls connected by a string at a ladder, with points ordinarily scored depending upon which rung the balls wrap around.
Tiano said the yard games are especially useful as the senior high gymnasium doesn’t have a functional dividing wall, thus eliminating units that are impractical in an open gym.
Senior high students recently completed a six-class outdoor games unit, and will occasionally see the games again in-between other units if the opportunity presents itself. The outdoor-indoor unit will find a home in the junior high gym after the winter break.
Tiano said that other traditionally outdoor games, like disc golf, are also making their way indoors.
“In the spring there are other outdoor activities that we like doing because it breaks it down into units that you can do in the gym,” Tiano said. “One of the new ones that we really started doing last couple of years was a disc golf. So in the spring we do a whole disc golf unit where we’re outside and the kids are starting to learn how to golf and the terms of golf through throwing a disc. But our springs tend to be filled up with other outdoor activities, so we llike doing it in the wintertime indoors, and then it’s an added unit that we can manage.”
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