School playgrounds during recess are both a thing of beauty and a field of injuries.
As the new school year starts across the country, children everywhere are looking forward to their favorite parts of the day and some teachers dread the most dangerous part of their supervision time. Thankfully, most playgrounds have evolved past the rules and regulations of the last few decades that limited creativity and made time outside down right boring. Back to playing kickball and simply running around playing tag, today’s children are enjoying their time in the sun. Or the rain, and even the snow, if their principals allow it.
If you think back to your days on the school playground, you likely have memories of falling from metal cross bars while you were flipping around. Landing on hard concrete surfaces. Flying off wiring metal emery go rounds. And, if you lucky enough being bounced silly by a so called friend on a teeter totter.
From the swing sets that swung so high you could literally launch yourself across a large area to the wide open spaces of an open field, playgrounds of the past were the things that dreams are made of. Fast forward to today, however, and the safety standards of this generation have nearly managed to take the play out of the ground. In a noble effort to make sure that children are more safe in their time outside of the classroom, there have been many playground updates in schoolyards across the country.
In addition to playgrounds becoming more safe, some of the surfacing techniques that are used on these school spaces are also being employed in other venues. With the advancement of new surfacing techniques, in fact, there are now outdoor tennis courts that remain as resilient as indoor ones. With more and more techniques to create an even playing surface, there are tennis courts across the country, both inside and out, that allow non professional players to perfect their craft, including training equipment.
To create an even playing surface is a saying, of course, that has an impact on and off the court. In life it means that everyone is getting a fair shake, that everyone has an opportunity to succeed. On the tennis court, the effort to create an even playing surface allows players to more predictably place their serves and more strategically return a volley. Knowing that life and the game of tennis are challenging enough, it only makes sense that there is a continued effort to create an even playing surface, or many would say field. Just as playing tennis for fun can burn as many as 169 calories in 30 minutes for a woman, and 208 calories in 30 minutes for an average man, there are many opportunities in life to build stamina and endurance. From making it into the office every day to succeeding in the classroom week after week, life is a long journey.
And while athletes are on the court and workers are in the office and children are in the classroom, there are often people watching the performance. In a tennis match, both outdoor and indoor benches provide seating for spectators. In real life, both bosses and teachers, as well as coworkers and classmates, are observing what is going on. Tennis uses a number of tennis court accessories to provide further success for these athletes. As an example, the fencing around a tennis court has two main purposes: to contain the ball within the playing area and to provide security. Life also has its boundaries. Safety regulations and local laws serve the purpose of making sure that even while workers and school children alike are trying to reach their goals, there is a provisions to make sure that the pursuit of those goals does not endanger anyone else.
One of the greatest challenges of today’s society, is an attempt to create an even playing field for as many people as possible, while still allowing the best of the best to soar to the highest heights. Government regulations and government subsidies alike might create a more even playing environment, but there are some who would argue that all of these regulations and safeguards are too much.
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