A common debate is whether playing sports can help you with school or hurt you. Wake up, go to seven hours of school, go straight to practice for two or more hours, get home late, eat dinner, and stay up finishing your schoolwork or studying. This routine is draining and can often take your focus away from schoolwork and decrease your motivation in completing your schoolwork or homework. However, when you have a busy schedule, you have to prioritize and find time in all that chaos to get your schoolwork done. You don’t have time to procrastinate when after dinner and before bed is your only chance to complete your work.

You learn many life skills through sports, how to deal with pressure, time management, deal with adversity, be okay with failure, adapt, how to work with a team, and hold yourself and others accountable. So how does school relate to sports? These various skills you learn from sports also apply to school. You need to be able to manage your time efficiently with all of your classes, be okay if you don’t do as well on a test or assignment as you hoped, and know that you will learn from it.

Even with all of these skills, some days after a hard, long practice, the last thing you want to do is math homework. Your energy is low and you just want to eat and crawl into bed to prepare yourself for the same thing the next day. Especially if you’re looking to play a sport in college you need to keep your academics up as well as your athletics. On the other hand, while that can be draining, this can up the ante for keeping your schoolwork up and getting good grades so you can continue playing your sport. Many schools require a certain GPA or attendance requirement to compete.

After asking athletes this question, many fell somewhere in between on whether sports have helped their education. They voiced the pros and cons they experience. A common con was the fact that you have significantly less time to study or do homework compared to other classmates and poor time management or procrastination can get the best of you. However, these athletes also stated that playing sports has helped them become more socially confident and set higher expectations for themselves.

Sydney Kosderka, a sophomore who competes in equestrian, believes while it does have its cons, staying active and playing sports allows her to think better. “The lessons I have learned from sports which I can apply to school are patience, dedication, and hard work,” stated Kosderka. Similarly, junior Tristan Davis, who is a rockstar on the basketball court and football field, feels the same as Kosderka. “Sports can help with school because it holds you accountable for your actions. However, sports can hurt somebody in school if they don’t manage their time well,” said Davis

Across the board, these athletes believe that the pros outweigh the cons. While it can be tough to balance these two worlds, student athletes believe that the skills they have learned like teamwork, holding themselves and others accountable, and how to deal with pressure have been worth it.