Heather Izzard

Mrs. Smalldon
ENG3U
July9, 2014
The Importance of High School Sports
What do you remember most about high school? Did you play sports? How did you stay
fit? While encouraging students to be more active and to help make high school memorable,
sports and extracurricular activities are essential for students with stronger abilities in specific
areas than their academic abilities.
In high school, students are pushed in academics and told only to focus on good grades.
Teachers tell them that they cannot play sports unless they have an average of above 70 percent
in all their classes. It is not physically healthy for a young adult to be working every minute of
their day. With this in mind, it is important to take breaks and to also do some physical activity.
Being in sports can keep them active and help clear their minds for better concentration. Some
students also use sports to relieve stress. For one thing, when homework piles up and good
grades start to count more and more as they get into the higher grades, students can get very
stressed. Sports give students the chance to relieve stress and afterward, be more focussed.
Equally important, students are smart in many different ways. According to the multiple
intelligences chart, the 8 basic ways in which a person can excel are, Musical/rhythmic,
intrapersonal, interpersonal, naturalist, bodily kinesthetic, visual/spatial, logical/mathematical
and verbal/linguistic. By all means, nobody is one hundred percent of any intelligence; each
person probably has a little bit of every one. Therefore, some students are smarter in certain areas
than in others. Being the energetic teenager, many high school students are strong in the
bodily/kinesthetic aspect of life. They enjoy expressing themselves physically and doing hands-
on work, but they could be weak in logical/mathematic intelligences. As a result, they might not
have a 90% in science but they could be the basketball team captain.
In addition, one of the most important experiences in high school is getting to know other
people and getting to know you. Generally speaking, when students sit in desks and are not
allowed to talk, the only time to find friends is during breaks and lunches. This is not a lot of
time. Sports create the opportunity for students to get involved and meet people with similar
interests. When students are asked: what is your favourite memory of high school? Chances are,
they will mention an occasion when they were involved with their school. Ultimately, they wont
remember that they forgot to the write the equation on the graph of the math test they wrote at
1:06 p.m. in March of grade ten. After all, high school is supposed to be the best four years of a
persons life. When they spend all their time panicking because they are not prepared for the
science test tomorrow, they will look back on their high school years and realize it was almost a
waste of time.
Heather Izzard
As has been noted, many students rely on school sports to stay active. If they didnt have
this, all their time would be spent on reading, writing, lab reports, studying and therefore gaining
stress, and weight. As well as handling stress and staying fit, without school sports how are
students ever going to know their school and their peers? Students need sports for the social
experience. Of course, some students work best while being involved and working with their
hands, while other students prefer written work. Thats why school sports are a choice, but
shouldnt it be available to every student throughout the entire school year?