How Do High School Students Get Their Work Done?
Most high school students today participate in a sport, either in or outside of school. This makes it more difficult for students to get their homework done daily, especially if they have a game that runs late into the evening. Accordingly, Students must balance their workload with going to practice or a game.
According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, high school sports participation increased for the 27th consecutive year in 2015-2016. There was an all-time high of 7,868,900 participants. Locally, there are a wide range of sports teams available to high school students – from school teams to club teams – offering a huge variety of choices. To stay active, students are encouraged to participate.
It can be hard to fit in team sports with the demands of schoolwork. Balancing homework and sports can be particularly difficult for students to handle when they first start out in high school. According to James Rippatoe, a student at St. John’s College High School, it was hard for him to sort this out. James, who plays rugby and swims, says that it was difficult to figure out how to balance both but “as the seasons went on, I realized how much time I should put towards each.” Another student at St. Johns, Mikey Petrizzo, says that sport practices take up most of his homework and study time but when he doesn’t have practice, he “feels that he has too much time to do nothing because I like to be active.” Jonny, an SSFS student, says that you need to maximize all your time which means you have to sacrifice hanging out with friends on the weekend.
Figuring out a balance can sometimes mean tradeoffs. Students sometimes find they can’t do it all. For James and Mikey, they have sometimes skipped athletic practice to get their work done. But they have also found themselves feeling stretched because of their athletic commitments. Teachers at their school will not give extensions for late work. James feels this is okay and that it is important to figure out a balance. Mikey says he feels “that they should sometimes get excused depending on the time the practice or game ends.” Jonny feels school comes first but also feels teachers should allow extensions for work if there is a short time to get the work done.
High school students enjoy playing sports. But being committed to a team is hard work and requires a lot of time management. It could mean giving up time you might spend hanging out with friends and family, or sleeping.
Hi, I'm Andrew and I'm a member of the Wildezine. I enjoy writing about sports journalism.
Christian McDaniel • May 14, 2018 at 9:56 pm
I think that balancing school work and after school sports is a serious dilemma that many student athletes have to face. After school practices can often cut evenings in half, and games could possibly takeaway a whole evening. I think that while the student athlete should ultimately be responsible for getting their work done, there should be at least some effort to assist student athletes in managing the workload by the school. At my old school, there was an hour and a half structured study hall before practices ran by the coaches themselves. This was really helpful for me in getting my work done and still being able to go to practice.
Sarah F. • Mar 14, 2018 at 11:40 pm
I think that, in some ways, participating in sports can provide us with the skills we need to get our classwork done (friends, problem solving, etc), but in others it creates stress and, at times, unreachable goals. We put together a balance of sports and schoolwork for ourselves, one that we think we can handle. Yet, many of us struggle with managing both classes and teams, and end up missing practices and homework assignments. We try to set both reasonable and challenging goals for ourselves, but in practice these goals can be hard to achieve, and we often end up overwhelmed.
Yiwen Song • May 28, 2017 at 5:07 pm
I think participating in sports gives us a good chance to develop our time management skills. Just like what is said in this article, some students may think playing a competitive sport is too much for them because of all those late games and hard workouts, which make them have little time and energy to focus on their schoolwork. However, you will never know whether you have the ability to do well on both without a try. Every year before I turned in the course registration form, I hesitate to sign up for two team sports, but I have never regretted about my choices. I totally agree with the viewpoint in the previous comment that “no matter what field you are doing, making efforts and hard work are key elements to be successful”.
Hanke Chen • May 22, 2017 at 1:56 pm
Sports are good in some ways:
– a sense of community
– competition training
– health body
– maybe opportunity to become professional players
But for me, a normal student. The time I used to study my own interest is occupied by sports. Time for clubs, group competitions like international science fair (that also could build a sense of community, competition training) is not enough given only couple Thursdays’ activity period.
Zhongting Ge • Mar 17, 2017 at 2:38 pm
It is very important for all of the students to balance between sport and homework. In China, students only have few time to do sports after school. They have a lot of homework to do everyday, and there is no time for them to do things they would like to do. But, students in the U.S. have many different kind of sports they could choose after school. Luckily, the homework for American students are not as much as Chinese students’. So, it is possible for a student to gets homework done after sports. There is, of course, another side to the question of how to make the best use of one’s time after sports.
Jonny Gherman • Mar 1, 2017 at 3:03 pm
I think the ability to balance both sports and athletics is something that some students get scared about. The ability to be a “Renaissance Man” and participate in something out side of the class can determine the success of student and they organize there life when no one is telling them to. This is well written article and I liked how you got quation from big sport schools that focus a lot on sports vs a smaller school that is trying to create the true Student Athlete.
Daphne Matyas • Feb 28, 2017 at 7:59 pm
This dilemma is very common with high school students across the country. We are encouraged to participate in as many activities as possible to boost our resumes and become a more “well-rounded” person. However, I believe that this is a huge cause for the dramatic increase in prescription drug abuse across the nation. Prescription drugs caused 4x more deaths in young adults in 2014 than in 1999. We are too stressed with too much to do and not enough time to do it.
Haoran Zhu • Feb 28, 2017 at 5:47 pm
Yes, I do feel the amount of work and pressure put on students’ shoulders, but I think it varies from one student to another. I, personally, like to challenge myself. This year, I have multiple goals in terms of academics, sports, and clubs I want to accomplish. Students make choices and they must hold responsibilities for it. Even if you are a sports superstar, you still have to take care of academic works. In the phrase, “student-athlete,” student comes before athlete. I completely agree with your point of sacrificing other times. Some of my peers make excuses of sports or arts participations being excuses for homework or assignments, I am not saying just one homework but in general; I find it problematic, because if you have made the choice of taking a class and being in a team, you have to fulfill both, even that means doing homework on the bus to a game. I believe that no matter what field you are doing, making efforts and hard work are key elements to be successful.