Education: Cycledelic

THE primly uniformed kids look like circus midgets on the movie set for The Bells of St. Mary’s. In fact, they are fourth-to eighth-graders at St. Helen’s, a small Roman Catholic parochial school in Newbury, Ohio. For the past three years, Father James J. Moran, 65, a former Notre Dame boxing champ, has made unicycling a requirement for passing phys ed at St. Helen’s. Though he bought the first cycle on a lark, Moran soon decided that the gadgets are dandy exercise machines as well as preparation for an even greater balancing act. “Kids today have to learn that life is full of hard knocks,” he says enthusiastically. Besides, the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. donates multicolored tires for the cyclers to test, plus tireless promotion. “You might say,” explains Moran, “we’ve gone cycledelic.”