Remember playing scooter tag or playing with the parachute in gym class growing up -- well a Marietta Middle school teacher creating a game that will be just like those kids across the country.
Lets take a little trip back in time to your middle school gym class: a time of growth spurts and trying to figure out what your good at.
Not always the most fun time, but Simpson Middle school physical education teacher Randy Watts wants to change that -- making PE fun for everybody, so he got creative and made up a game.
“It is a disc or a Frisbee game, that you're trying to hit a target in the middle of the gym,” coach Watts explains to WSB’s Michelle Wright.
The game is interactive, fun, teaches basic skills and involves everyone.
Laying out the basics of the game, coach Watts says, “It's a passing game so it teaches the students spatial awareness, how to get open.”
Watts adds, “It also teaches them how to throw a disc. And if you drop it,or if you miss the target, and it hits the ground, you have to take it back to the starting line, where your team started and start again.”
When it first rolled out in 2017, the kids at the Marietta school loved it so much Coach Watts presented at the district level, to other teachers, who also loved it, and he thought he may be on to something.
Watts then called up Gopher Sport -- who thought, ‘yep, we love it and we can market it.’
Representatives with Gopher Sport was able to make sure they were the proprietary manufacturer of the equipment.
“And that's what made this game so special,” Watts says, adding, “Because anybody who wants to play this game now has to go to Gopher Sport to get the equipment."
And when they do -- Coach Watts gets the credit and a cut. While the kids are stoked to have a claim to fame.
“They kind of take ownership of like 'Hey! Simpson is home of Target Duel,” coach Watts says -- and that makes Phys Ed all the more fun.











