Schoolchildren got the message once again this week that they come dead last in New York’s pecking order, as Mayor Eric Adams confiscated public ballfields on Randall’s Island to construct a tent city for newly arrived migrant men.
Only last spring, the mayor installed arriving migrants in public-school gymnasiums, cutting city kids off from essential school-day physical activity.
Some frustrated parents believe that by the time city taxpayers got word of the possible field closures, the deal was already a fait accompli.
They’re probably right: Construction began early this week.
Even so, a petition Manhattan Soccer Club started calling for the ballfields’ preservation quickly racked up more than 2,500 signatures from angry parents.
Comments include: “I played sports on this field everyday of high school and I hope my kids will get to do the same as a lifelong New Yorker!”
“This would have a devastating impact on youth sports in Manhattan.”
“There are so few options already in the city for kids to play team sports, please consider other options across the wider state.”
But construction is moving ahead.
“Surely a less precious space can be found, rather than alienating parkland, perhaps by using private rather than public space,” Randall’s Island Park Alliance co-chairs wrote to the deputy mayor for operations last week.
Their pleas were ignored, leaving children’s sports leagues like Manhattan Soccer Club and West Side Soccer League scrambling to salvage the fall season slated to begin early September.
Children often start in these leagues at age 3 and continue through high school.
Is it cynical to believe the mayor chose to launch the construction project in August, when many city families are away from the concrete jungle, because he knew how much resistance he would face, even among the most progressive New Yorkers?
According to Randall’s Island Park Alliance, 3,000 hours of recreation for both public and private schoolchildren, as well as adult sports leagues, stand to be canceled as a result of the construction.
This includes my own daughters’ soccer games, which have been played on the island for several years and give them much-needed physical activity, team engagement and outdoor time after long weeks spent indoors at their urban public schools that, unlike many suburban schools, lack green spaces and resources for team sports.
Behind every hour lost are dozens of New York City children denied space and time to play, children who were locked down during the pandemic, leading to soaring rates of obesity, mental illness and crime across the city.
The mayor is reinforcing the message that city kids come last, even after newly arrived adults.
I know Adams knows better.
I was one of the organizers of a February 2021 #LetThemPlay rally at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, where Adams, then borough president, joined a group of parents and athletes imploring Mayor Bill de Blasio to reinstate public-school sports.
Adams declared, “The COVID virus will be here for a season. But what we’re taking away from these children will be here for a lifetime.”
He was very clear about the importance of kids’ sports, sharing advice from his high-school coach: “It doesn’t matter what you do wrong in the game, it matters what you do for the season.”
But here he is, taking the season from the kids.
Together with other public-school parents, teachers and coaches, I have been advocating the reinstatement of kids’ sports for the past three years.
In fact, I am producing a documentary on the impact of lockdowns on America’s kids called “15 Days…,” and youth sports is a major focus.
One of the kids featured in our film, Garrett “Bam” Morgan, a former Queens high-school football player who lost his opportunity for a college football scholarship when public-school athletics were shut down from 2020 through fall 2021, said it best: “A sport is going to get [kids] off the street, get them into an environment where they have a support system, a brotherhood, a sisterhood.”
I know these team sports have been immensely beneficial to my own kids and their friends.
I have interviewed many others who have said sports are essential.
Mayor Adams, let our kids play.
Natalya Murakhver is co-founder of the nonprofit Restore Childhood.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
