Sports in Schools

Many schools have sports as extracurricular activities that students can participate in. I played school sports in every season all throughout my junior high and high school careers. Everyone participates in sports for different reason, whether it is because they love to play the sport to it may just give them something to do outside of the regular school day.


I absolutely love playing sports and I loved being on a team with my friends who loved to play too. My friends and I, for the most part, were on the same teams from junior high all through high school. When playing on teams like this, you form a stronger bond with them and become more of a family while playing the sport and also off the court. You become someone they can count on and they become people that you can count on if you ever need them. This is one of the greatest aspects about sports. You form bonds with your teammates that last can last a lifetime.

Sports can also be a type of release for the players from the everyday life. For the two hours or so that you are engaged in the sport, that is your main focus. It is a way to forget about everything else for a while and just have a good time. As Matt Cassle says in this video, it can serve as a "great distraction" for the players. Which at times, can be exactly what the players, the coaches, and sometimes the community as a whole needs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs4FbT97QP0&feature=player_detailpage

Sports have a way of expanding upon just the performance of the sport by the players. Sports serve as a way of bringing together people of all different lives and backgrounds and giving them something in common, sports; whether you are a player, a fan, a coach, etc. You can see this anywhere you go. Even though there are two teams playing against each other, they are all taking part in the one game, together.

Sports also have the ability to keep students' academic performances up. At my high school, we had an academic code of conduct for athletes where they were only able to play if their grades were satisfactory. This makes the players study and make sure that they do well in school because if they didn't, they wouldn't be put on academic probation for the sport.

In an economy like ours is now, many schools are needing to cut their budgets and unfortunately, because sports are an extracurricular activity, sometimes they are the first to go. I know of many schools who are cutting Modified and, in some cases, even Junior Varsity sports because they can not afford to keep them going. I believe that schools need to do all that they can in order to keep sports offered for the students. A great thing that I witnessed this past summer was by the students of a school next to my high school. The school wasn't going to afford to keep the high school soccer teams going. They still needed around $13,000 which they didn't have. The players, coaches, and parents did not want this to happen so they did all they could to help out. The teams did fundraiser after fundraiser after fundraiser and eventually, by the end of this past summer, the teams reached their goal of raising the amount of money needed and were able to play this fall. It was great to see that the push from the teams and the hard work from the players to raise the money because they wanted to play so badly. It shows you how if you want something badly enough, it's possible to achieve it.

I wish to be a coach in the future and since sports have had such a strong influence on my life, I want other children to be able to have the great opportunities that I had growing up and making sure that sports stay in schools is very important to me.