Sports and athletics are an important part of a Bronxville education - encouraging fitness, leadership, grit, and lessons about sportsmanship and teamwork. The Foundation has invested more than $1.3 million to bring specialized equipment, coach and teacher training, new facilities and technology to enhance recess, Phys Ed classes and Bronxville’s sports teams.
Elementary School
Physical fitness starts in the earliest grades and recess and Phys. Ed. classes provide daily, much-needed energy breaks for Elementary students.
Foundation grants provided many popular recess activities. In 2014, a group of fifth-grade students recognized the need for a safe, physical activity that many children could play at once. With help from a parent volunteer, they wrote a grant to build a Gaga Pit. Gaga is a fast-paced, high-energy, kinder version of dodge ball played in an octagonal pit with 12-16 players at a time. The Gaga Pit is used during Elementary School recess, Phys. Ed. classes (K-12), the after-school program, and community events at the fields. To allow more students to play at the same time, a Foundation grant funded the construction of a second Gaga Pit in 2023.
In the fall of 2021, a Foundation grant transformed the blacktop portion of the Elementary School playground into a 21st-century playspace through a thermoplastic playground surface with colorful designs like hopscotch, four-square, obstacle courses, and more.
Equally popular are the Imagination Playground blocks purchased through Foundation grants in 2015 and 2017. These larger-than-life-size blocks include cubes, cogs, rods and more and allow children to exercise their bodies and their minds as they create and build during recess.
Along the same lines, a recent grant added audio-visual equipment in three Elementary School playrooms that include large screen monitors, speakers, wireless microphones, and bluetooth connectivity. The screen and speaker media system supports and enhance Physical Education curriculum as well as mindfulness and yoga exercises. With the use of Air Tame 2, PE teachers use apps and other novel capabilities on iPads to cast the screen right to the monitors in the gyms.
Elementary Phys. Ed. teachers also collaborated with Elementary Science teachers to request a grant for "STEM in the Gym" – a kit containing pulleys, levers, wedges, gears, wheels and axles that students manipulate in the gym getting a physical and a Physics workout at the same time.
Middle & High School
Bronxville’s Phys. Ed. teachers and coaches realize that athletics is first and foremost about fitness and healthy competition, which is why they’ve requested grants for the Winning Mindset program by Gene Zanetti and training in Stanford University’s Positive Coaching Alliance model. Other significant athletics grants include introducing the "Baseline Impact Testing" protocol, to protect Bronxville athletes from the effects of concussions as well as athletic training and rehabilitation equipment like that used in professional physical therapy facilities to help injured athletes heal faster. The athletic training room also was recently renovated and a Foundation grant funded the new equipment and furniture for the space, allowing more student athletes to get pre/post practice and game treatment at the same time and rehabilitate in a facility better equipped to support their needs.
Phys. Ed. also recognizes that exposing students to a diverse range of athletic endeavors is important. In 2012, a $24,000 Foundation grant installed a 24-foot wide, 16-foot high climbing wall with four climbing stations. The wall was an incremental Foundation grant to Project Adventure that also includes a high-ropes component.
Athletic teams can’t be at their best without adequate, safe equipment and sometimes they need specialized resources to excel in today’s competitive arena. When the Athletic Department budget is exhausted, Foundation grants can help. Grants have funded bike trailers and medical equipment for the Mountain Biking team, football helmets and sleds, baseball radar guns to measure pitch speed, lacrosse goals, steeple chase equipment and more.
Technology isn’t just for the classroom, but part of athletics too. iPads for coaches were furnished with Foundation resources. Teams used the iPads in training sessions for real time visual feedback to athletes and for quickly compiling and sending out stats and results to the press and to Max Preps. HUDL software was another Foundation grant for a high-tech athletic scouting system that allows our coaches and athletes to get full-team access to video analysis tools and help with college athletic recruiting.
Fans also are able to view athletic events through a live streaming option on LocalLive Networks that was first made possible by a grant from the Foundation. This grant was particularly valuable during the pandemic when attendance at home games was limited to two spectators per athlete.
