Pathway to Podium: The social and physical importance of play

The Te Puna Taiao playground for Kimi Ora Community School that is part of a school revamp.

"Every body active."

That's the new vision for Sport NZ, sounds pretty simple, but there is a lot of depth and breadth to the plan, and many challenges in bringing it to a reality.

With physical activity levels in decline, Sport NZ is taking a stand as the "kaitiaki (guardian) of the Play, Active Recreation and Sport system in Aotearoa New Zealand".

One of the main initiatives they are driving is the concept of play.

Play sounds a bit soft and wishy washy – but there's more to play than first meets the eye.

With the advent of technology and changing urban environments, it's no given that play is always going to be there for kids, we need to set things up, so it is locked in for our future communities.

As they say, we are all products of our environment. The location of where you are born and brought up can have a profound impact on your likelihood of participating in sport, and achieving high performance levels in sport - they call it the birthplace effect.

It really does take a community to raise a child, and so much of it starts with quality play. So when you really think about play, we can't take it for granted, we can't take our eye off the ball, it's crucial.

Kimi Ora School principal Matt O'Dowda (far left) is driving a multimillion-dollar revamp of Kimi Ora Community School that reflects the community's rohe and tangata.

If we can be proactive, think big picture, and get this play thing humming in all our communities, then it will definitely have a big impact on the future of our New Zealand.

We have to do something now, the rates of activity are dropping, and the rates of sitting on our backsides is rising. The full impacts of that, on our physical and mental health are yet to be fully understood - especially when you throw the impact of devices and technology into the mix.

If we don't slow that trends down, and turn them around, who knows where we will end up.

So where do we look to first? The obvious place is where we have kids locked in on a regular basis - Schools and Early Childhood Education.

The Sport NZ model for play is particularly targeting our 5-11 year old Tamariki, so that's honing in on the primary schools. If we think about the impact the environmental can have on development, and then get creative to optimise the spaces that the kids will be inhabiting day after day.

Ideally the little kids will stumble out of their classrooms, straight into an environment where it's hard to avoid play – one where they can get their independent imagination development going, as well as their physical movements.

As they get older the access to all the bits and pieces of equipment that promote generic sports skills, with cages and walls for hitting, kicking and throwing balls around. We need to make play attractive and the real fun that it can be, we have to, the alternative future just doesn't bare thinking about – humans sitting around inside on devices, going mad.

A good quality grounding of play will underpin our peoples' general health, physical and mental, as well as a solid base to kick on to a love of sport and the potential for high performance.

The moves that have been made at Kimi Ora Primary School, led by principal Matt O'Dowda were featured in the news last week, and are a great example for others to follow.

Each school environment will be different, but the way they have thought outside the square, to do right by their kids and community, is great to see.

In regard to the birthplace effect, we have it pretty damn good here in regional New Zealand with our natural environments, especially in the areas with good weather and all the extra outdoor play time our kids can get.

But we need to be proactive, to take our human-made play environments to the next level.

Once we get through primary school, it's a slightly different set of factors at play at intermediate and high school, the facilities required to continue to drive everything from active recreation through to developing high performance.

The play zones include all community outdoor spaces, not just in schools, the solutions need to be locally driven, and there is great potential for collaboration between councils and experts in the field to get it right.

One thing is for sure, technology isn't going away, it's surprising the lack of pushback from community health leaders on the use of devices.

One thing we can do as a community, is strive to make outdoor play the most attractive proposition possible for our young, and not so young.