SBUnified
By the Santa Barbara Unified School District
It’s not every day you can play soccer for school, but that’s what roughly 60 Santa Barbara elementary school students did [last month]..
The teachers and staff of Monroe Elementary, Cleveland Elementary, Harding University Partnership School, and Adelante Charter school hosted a lunchtime soccer league for students.
The event featured about 60 6th-grade students playing soccer at Cleveland Elementary.Students in attendance said they were excited to get outside and play soccer with other students. The students from all four schools were sorted into teams to meet each other and build camaraderie.
“We wanted to bring these students together for a day of fun and to get to know each other before beginning junior high,” said Cleveland Principal Gabriel Sandoval.
The idea was inspired by Monroe Principal Brian Naughton, who wanted to build community and teach sportsmanship through soccer. #weareunified
The schools want to plan more meet-ups in the future and feature other sports.
“My hope is we’ll be able to do this again and bring back the positive vibes to school,” said Martin Cook, Assistant Principal at Harding.
Great idea! About time!
Excellent idea. Sport is one of the great community builders when done well.
This is a great idea! Team sports teach such critical life lessons, aside from being healthy and keeping kids outdoors away from screens. I know in some GUSD schools they used to do a lunch time flag football team as well and play other schools. That was always fun to watch!
We played flag football at Kellogg school at lunch when I was a kid.
Mr. Shields always was all in on helping us and officiating.
When my kids were at Washington the PTA/parents (I forget) raised enough money for a coach. He was great.
Coaches are often the driver of unhealthy competition and shame. Coaches are often the arbitrator of “macho” values and the idea that “success” is winning. Coaches are jocks by and large and are not trained in ethics and ways to live a healthy, happy, rewarding and integrative life. So just let the coaches stay away. Kids with a little supervision from staff can do just fine in elementary school competition. They will, if left to their own, create some fairness that modern sports competition does not acknowledge.
Why would they need to hire a coach for a pick up soccer game with elementary school kids?? Next thing they will want to be paid for participation and NIL rights!! Can’t we just let kids be kids, discover things, meet others, share and not worry about “winning?”
9:33am – Because coaches help kids develop skills needed to compete in the particular game. Because coaches are an adult presence that can help kids with other life skills if parents aren’t available. Because coaches act as officials when there isn’t enough money to hire them. Because lots of reasons.