High School Sports Research Paper

A 5 '7”, junior in high school, taking three AP classes, class president, all league soccer player, who is hospitalized due to high blood pressure and seizures. The senior quarterback, with tons of friends, granted a full ride scholarship to USC, and has to decline and quit football because of four F’s in his classes. A sophomore basketball player, who’s already being scouted by Division 1 schools, taking six challenging classes, and on crutches for the whole season because she continued to play basketball with a twisted ankle and an injured knee. How can such a frightening situation be taking place in these young adults lives? This awful and increasingly problematic scene is happening all over the world, all for the same reasons (Bowen). With
Eat. Go to school. Go to practice. Go home. Do homework. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. With playing sports all year round, it never ends, and student athletes are all very familiar with the word ‘stress’”, quotes Sami Von Gober, a three-sport superstar with a superb grade point average, who knows firsthand the difficulties of dealing with everything a teenage athlete has to handle. Although athletics and staying active are necessary in certain children’s lives, overdoing sports and exercise can lead to serious complications. Many athletes have heard it before; “School comes first”, “Homework before sports”, and “If you are too stressed out, you can miss a practice.” But with the threat of missing a game if one misses a practice, or extra conditioning drills if a player is late, many young athletes would choose to dismiss a homework assignment rather than miss an extra hour of athletic coaching to help them excel in their sport. Student athletes have a loss of focus in classes due to thinking about their sport. Will they start the next game? How does that one play go again? Is practice going to be hard tonight? These are the kinds of questions running through an athlete’s head while they should be focusing on math equations or science vocabulary. Another problem that is increasing in young athletes is sleep deprivation, which can be hazardous to a child’s health, ability to play their sport correctly, and attentiveness in class. Lack of sleep can lead to hallucinations,
The problem of over-stressed athletes has become such a complication that high school players are getting pulled out of their sport due to stress related injuries and inability to maintain their required GPA. With coaches and parents, colleges, competing players, staying on a strong academic path, and the constant fear of injury, it is understandable why so many student athletes have breakdowns, failing grades, and are unable to connect with anything but their sport and schoolwork. But something all student athletes should know is that they are not alone; there are millions of high school athletes all over the world with the same problems and struggles as the ones