Sports can be a very strenuous activity both physically and mentally. Thousands of parents enroll children into sports every year and many don't see all the components that go into the child's development. There are various factors that work into the success of a student athlete and sometimes those factors aren't always positive. A student's financial status, his/her coach, his/her academic standing, all play into the deciding whether or not a child should become a student athlete. Some say that the benefits outweigh the consequences for the child, but others believe that it can be a waste of time and energy. However, it is the decision for the student to make after weighing all the factors.
It has been found that students who play sports have shown to improve in various aspects of their educational because of the skills they learn in the sport. The correlation between the amount of physical education the child has (which include instructional physical education and extracurricular physical activity, including in-school physical activity programmes, intra school and intramural sport) can affect how the child performs in school. An experiment conducted by a Korean High School uses a control group of students who had PE for 40 minutes a week and then the experimental group who had 5 hours of physical education per week (Trudeau, 1). What was concluded was that the experimental group had a higher academic performance than their control group. These results were measured with the child's GPA and it was found that the children who had 5 hours of PE per week were shown to have higher scores in mathematics, but lower scores
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in english. In the experiment it was stated that in order for the children to have 5 hours of PE the have to 33 minutes less of mathematics class, but the amount of time they spent in English was not altered (Trudeau, 1).This study shows that there is a positive correlation when it comes to PE and mathematics grades, but the same doesn't hold true for english.
Another experiment conducted involved children being taught by professional physical educators, a trained homeroom teacher, were or in the normal program. The professional physical educators, the trained teachers, and normal programmes offered, respectively, 80, 65, and 38 minutes per week of PE( Trudeau pg. 2). The children taught by the trained teachers and the professional physical educators did not have as great of a drop in academic performance than those taught in the normal program even though they spent more time in PE. Furthermore, the group with the psychical educator which are the ones that spent the most time in PE per week almost little to none decrease in their grades and it overall didn't have any negative effects academically.
Some may argue that playing sports as a student takes away from the child having the ability to fully immerse themselves into their schoolwork and causes unneeded stress to the students. An experiment tested the structural relationships between stress, burnout, athletic identity, and athlete satisfaction in student athletes attending Korea’s physical education high schools. What was found was that there is a strong correlation between high levels of burnouts was associated with low levels of satisfaction. Lee argues that student athletes must complete academic studies while doing high-intensity training and participating in competitions. Along with the intensity of the sport, they have to deal with various outside factors like injuries,
performance slumps, problems with their coaches, dealing with media scrutiny, over the top expectations, and organizational policies. It was boiled down to four factors as a result of a
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validity test, they determined that the stressors of such students arises from athletic stress, conflict with teammates, coach stress, and life stress. These factors can have unfavorable effects on mental health such as increasing anxiety, increasing depression, and declining self worth because they spend copious amounts of time trying to better themselves physically that they tend to push their education aside. Another stressor is that student athletes look towards the future and it is unclear as what the options are for them because there are few opportunities for employment in the athletics sector for PEHS graduates. (Lee, 2017)
Students who start to play sports at a young age are vulnerable to a variety of traumatic injuries and injuries that show that the children are overused. The National Center for Sports Safety reports that 3.5 million children aged 14 years and younger receive medical care for sports-related injuries each year, and of all the sports-related injuries that are cared for in the emergency room, two thirds involve injuries to children. “With increased youth participation in sports, an increase in sports-related injuries has been observed, with 2.6 million emergency room visits each year for those aged 5–24 years ”(Merkel, 2013). This is mainly due to the fact that children are still growing and have quick, expanding bones and slow thriving muscles, the tension between them in the apophyses and the joints causes an increase in tensile forces and can place the structures at risk of injury.
Another point to be made is that young children look to their coaches, parents, schools, and other institutions for gratification that they are doing well in the sport and over getting better at it. This gratification is difficult to find for most because of the odds held against them.
“Unfortunately, the reality is that 98% of young athletes will never reach the highest level in sport. Less than 4% of high school athletes who participate in boys’ soccer, girls’ soccer,
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football, and basketball play for a division I or division II school”(Merkel, 2013). This is a difficult idea to grasp because the family will sacrifice a lot in the hope that one day their child will defeat these odds. First and foremost the financial sacrifice for some families can be very impactful, some families have to give up vacations, savings, and normal family structure to support their child's sporting endeavors. In return, they hope that their child will reach a level excellence that will pay for the child's college expenses, however the majority of athletes will not receive enough money to cover the cost of today’s tuition. It turns out that only 1 of 100 high school athletes receive a division I athletic scholarship and those who were able to receive scholarships received $10,409 which is about half the cost of a state school and 20% of the cost of private school attendance (Merkel, 2013).
Although financial status holds tremendous importance on the success of the child, but so do the coaches who play a key role in helping the child navigate their role as a student athlete. A student athlete spends multiples hours per week with their coach and it can even be said that they spend more time interacting their coach than with their own families, the coach becomes a model for behavior. The coach essentially becomes a momentous role model for the child and can be highly influential and this influential role cannot be overestimated. It is found that both parents and athletes rated the majority of youth coaches as only good, with 25% reported as less than good (Merkel, 2013). Most coaches who spend the tremendous amount of time with these young althric are not trained in conditioning and stretching practices necessary for helping the athletic improve and take care of themselves. They are not knowledgeable in “cardiopulmonary
resuscitation, automated external defibrillation, emergency management of sports injuries”, or in basic first aid which can result in an increase the severity of injuries for the children (Hedstorm,
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2004). Furthermore, there are very little requirements when it comes to becoming a coach for a youth sports teams. Therefore, the level of experience among youth coaches range from paid coaches who have years of experience of playing sports to parent volunteers who sometimes have no experience with sports. This lack of experience leads to reports of negative actions taken by the coaches causing the athletes to quit the sport. Some even report being called names, insulted, and shouted at by coaches (Merkel, 2013). This all leads to the athlete being affected negatively and not having the ability to reach their fullest potential in their athletic ability.
There are thousands of student athletes across the world and some are able to provide to make it to the top, while others enjoy playing sports for pure enjoyment. Children are faced with multiple factors that can either hurt them in their academic career or aid them in their future endeavors. Many factors play into the well being of the child while they play sports and most try their best to give a student athlete the best experience. It up to the child to determine if being a student athlete's worth the time and effort to them and they can look at the world around them to guide them in this decision.