Stress of Sports

By: Staff Writer, Maddee Anderson

Many students are involved in some sort of sport during the school year. Some may do this out of love for the sport, wanting to be with friends or simply just wanting to stay in shape. No matter your reason for playing, it is stressful. School rules make it very difficult on student athletes.

To be a student athlete you have to have passing grades, never skip practice and you are always expected to have a good attitude about things. Sometimes fulfilling all these tasks takes a toll on your mental and/or physical health. For example, there is practice every day for about two hours after already completing a seven hour school day. This means you have around nine hours taken out of your day, not including the homework you may have been assigned that you are expected to get done.

Coaches claim that health and school come first but never give you a break. If you cannot attend practice for any reason they will interrogate you, making you feel guilty about missing. They will even bench you for however long they feel necessary in the next game you play. However, coaches can leave or not show up whenever their schedules don’t line up correctly.

Coaches do not realize that not everyone’s life revolves around the sport they play. There are other things going on in people’s lives that are more important than a high school sport.

Many programs are slowly dying because no one has the motivation to play anymore. I am a part of the group that is losing motivation. For me, it’s because of the team and coaches. Teams don’t even feel like ‘teams’ anymore. It feels as though everyone is competing against each other and just wants to be the best one out there. They would rather look like the best single player than be a good player on the best team.

To get younger kids to look forward to high school and be excited about playing a sport instead of dreading it, I think we should change some things. Coaches should bond with their team, as well as the younger kids that will someday be playing for them. Allow players to have at least a couple days for their mental and physical health, to get school work done and to just relax.

In sports, we are often reminded that we are “student athletes” and that “student” comes first. I argue that even though that is important, everyone needs to remember that we are “people” first and sometimes those other titles need to come second.