Mills High Physical Education to Introduce New Curling Unit

2023-2024. It seems unreasonable, but faculty are unwavering in this new system-changing decision.

OnApril 1st, 2023, the MHS (Mills High School) board announced that Mills will shorten a few PE units with a DIY curling unit in an attempt to avoid injury and damage. The new unit will begin for the following school year

The reason for this replacement was stated in the message the Mills Administrative Team sent out on Aeries. “Due to the constant damage of equipment and injuries, the PE units lacrosse, softball, badminton, and floor hockey will be shortened, and the leftover time will be transferred to a safer unit: curling.”

Although equipment-centered units are typically favored, it has been set to dissolve for the following year, due to students getting too aggressive in the sport, injuring each other and breaking hand-held equipment. The altered curling will consist of wiffle balls, a larger ball, and floor hockey sticks. Students will be put in groups of five to play. The game will begin with the floor littered with wiffle balls. The first student will roll the bigger ball, while the other four students will hit the wiffle balls away lightly from the path of the larger ball. The rules will be further determined by the PE teacher’s meeting on the matter on April 20th, about two to three weeks from now.

Already, a large amount of the faculty is very supportive of the new decision. Mr. Moss, one of the PE teachers at Mills, states, “Students kept damaging the equipment, especially the badminton rackets because they’re extremely fragile. Badminton rackets are not cheap in the slightest. We hope that shortening the units will lower the risk of our expensive equipment being broken.”

Considering that there are more or less 40 students per PE class, the reparation costs of hand-held equipment alone can eventually rack up to a significant amount. The new curling unit reuses more durable equipment in a calm, low-risk environment, all while including good cardio and arm workouts. The benefits of the new curling unit are an appealing idea to several of the Mills community including the board, PE teachers, and even parents.

In addition to the Aeries message, the school has released a plan online on how they will execute a smooth transition into curling throughout the year. The board plans to include curling as a short unit sev- eral times a year, with a total of four times during intense weeks such as around finals and before midterms. Since the variation of curling is very versatile, students would be able to play curling as a substitute for any unit other than swimming.

Although the idea is overall safer and ideal, some students are against the idea. Annie Chang (9), complains, “This idea is idiotic. The so-called curling unit is messy and everywhere. I don’t understand why we have to do such a boring sport four separate times.”

Another freshman, Thomas Liu, confesses, “I mean, it’s okay but I can’t imagine hitting wiffle balls away for like an hour and thirty.”

Although students’ opinions on the change are important, small opinions will not be able to change the board’s new decision of adding curling to the school PE curriculum. However, if the change does arise as a problem in the near future, there is a possibility that the idea will be scrapped. Overall, adding curling into the curriculum was the optimal decision for avoiding the risk of injury and damage, the main reason as to why the Mills PE unit decided to adopt curling in the first place. Curling seems like it will be here to stay. It may even serve as a gateway to other unique sports that will be introduced to Mills later on.