Children are learning sport skills in their backyard while in lockdown. Photo / File
Children are learning sport skills in their backyard while in lockdown. Photo / File
One of the positives to come out of this whole corona thing, has been a big comeback for the good old backyard sports at home.
Don Bradman, the greatest cricketer of all time, famously spent hours in his small backyard, playing his own games of cricket hitting a golf ballup against the water tank with a cricket wicket.
Over the past few weeks the internet has been awash with home-based skills and ideas for kids to keep up their sports during lockdown – high-performance athletes, Sport NZ, and all sorts of individuals have been sharing great ideas and challenges. It's going to take a bit of lifestyle adjustment, but the longer this goes on, hopefully we will get more and more used to the kids being able to play at home – like the old days, out in the backyard, in the garage, hallway, wherever they can.
With so much structured sport these days, and all the organised team practices that go with it, and even the sports academies, it doesn't leave much time for the old backyard sports. And what a shame that is, because so much skill and love for the game can be developed in those home environments.
The environment we are brought up in of course, has such a huge impact on how we turn out, and in sport there are countless examples of top athletes who have developed and emerged out of the competitive play environments they found themselves in as kids.
As well as the "Don", analysis was done on the more modern Aussie cricketers of the 1990s and 2000s, and many of them, like the Waugh brothers, developed much of their ability in the backyard.
The great West Indian cricketers were the same, playing on the beach, South American footballers brought up on the congested street environments, and even in our own backyard great rugby players like McCaw and Carter being forged in the fun and competitive play of small regional towns miles away from any structured academy.
Any sort of games will do. Especially when children are young there is no need to specialise, almost any sport or physical activity will add to the well-rounded development.
And it doesn't even need to be sports. With all the devices these days, there will be many kids who don't know what it means to be bored and will never have had to use their imagination to even come up with a game.
But spending that time as a youngster, to be away in their own world in some imaginary game is gold for brain development, and learning the ability to think, create and believe what is possible – all great skills for later in life.
Everyone knows we have to control the amount of device time, and that is a challenge now that school is back, which requires this online world to continue engagement in school work.
A difficult balance for schools and parents, between giving children what they need, and not overdoing the screen time, and all the negative psychological impacts that can come with that.
So again, Covid-19 has forced fresh ideas upon us and made us think, and certainly stimulated a great surge in home-based games which is great.
It's made many of us more conscious of the environment we live in, and think about how we can better make use of our home to foster healthy play, and also explore our neighbourhood to discover fun play spaces that were right under our noses.
It doesn't have to be a big space either, often smaller confined spaces are better, resulting in more contacts and actions in the game, and faster reaction times developed – more fun, and better skill development.
With winter sports delayed for who knows how long, there will be plenty of opportunity for kids to get more used to creating their own games at home. Parents might have to get a bit more relaxed with the rules around the house, and hopefully as soon as the levels get relaxed, that play can involve more nearby neighbours as well.
• Marcus Agnew is the health and sport development manager at Hawke's Bay Community Fitness Centre Trust and a lecturer in sports science at EIT.
