Essay: Should sports be re-evaluated in American high schools?

7/20/18
Should sports be re-evaluated in American high schools?
In American high schools, sports are part of most students lives. Sports in high schools can also help the students in their everyday lives. It can encourage students to be more social and hardworking in class and outside of class. It can also help students who are at risk and have disadvantages. This is why the role of sports in American high schools should not be re-evaluated.
First of all, students who are in sports learn how to work hard to succeed and achieve their goals. In the article ”Do Sports Build Character or Damage It?”, Mark Edmundson writes “The first year I played high-school football, the coaches were united in their belief that drinking water on the practice field was dangerous. It made you cramp up, they told us. It made you sick to your stomach, they said. So at practice, which went on for two hours, twice a day, during a roaring New England summer, we got no water” (Edmundson 99). This part of the article is about a personal experience on playing sports in high school and how it encouraged him to do keep pushing forward when others gave up. An article called, “Athletes Are More Likely to Finish High School Than Non-Athletes” on theatlantic.com, states that, “Kansas puts on its athletes: Students must pass five credit units per semester to be eligible to play. Most schools also ask students to be in school to be allowed to attend practice or play in a game that day” (paragraph 5). It is important to many to be able to work hard and achieve their goals not just in schools, but also for jobs.
With that being said, what does sports have for students in the long run? On the New York Times website an article called, “High School Students Gain Lifetime Benefits” Kevin Kniffin writes, “Hiring managers expect former student-athletes (compared with people who participated in other popular extracurriculars) to have more self-confidence, self-respect and leadership; actual measures of behavior in a sample of people who had graduated from high school more than five decades earlier showed those expectations proved accurate” (paragraph 3). This shows how students that are playing a sport are more likely to get hired. In the article, “The Case for High School Sports”, Kai Soto points out that, “In 2002, a study by mutual fund company Oppenheimer revealed that a shocking 82% of women in executive-level jobs had played organized sports in middle, high or post-secondary school. Moreover, nearly half of women earning over $75,000 identified themselves as ‘athletic’” (Sato 96). In this part of the article Sato is explaining how workers who used to play sports are now very successful.
Which brings me to my final point, how sports help everyone. In, “High School Sports Aren’t Killing Academics”, Bowen and Hitt state how low-income students have less access to organized athletics elsewhere. The research they cite to support their case indicates, “According to a 2013 evaluation conducted by the Crime Lab at the University of Chicago, Becoming a Man — Sports Edition creates lasting improvements in the boys’ study habits and grade point averages. During the first year of the program, students were found to be less likely to transfer schools or be engaged in violent crime” (98). Another research they cite is, “In an overview of the research on non-school based after-school programs, Gardner, Roth, and Brooks-Gunn find that disadvantaged children participate in these programs at significantly lower rates. They find that low-income students have less access due to challenges with regard to transportation, non-nominal fees, and off-campus safety. Therefore, reducing or eliminating these opportunities would most likely deprive disadvantaged students of the benefits from athletic participation, not least of which is the opportunity to interact with positive role models outside of regular school hours” (98).
In conclusion, high school sport are encouraging students to be hard working and not interfering with their academics. The high school sports are also helping students in schools who are in low-income families, by giving them positive role models to talk with outside of school. Therefore the sports in high school are helping students overall whether they come from a wealthy family or not.
Work Cited
Barkhorn, Eleanor. “Athletes Are More Likely to Finish High School Than Non-Athletes.”
The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 30 Jan. 2014, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/01/athletes-are-more-likely-to-finish-high-school-than-non-athletes/283455/. Accessed 19 July 2018.
Kniffin, Kevin. “The New York Times Company.” The New York Times, The New York
Times, 22 Oct. 2014, www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/10/21/taking-sports-out-of-school-2/high-school-athletes-gain-lifetime-benefits. Accessed on 19 July 2018.