As IB Diploma Candidates and athletes (one of us doing three sports with school) we found the editorial on giving sports players more leniency particularly unsettling and insulting. First and foremost, the logic behind the opinion makes no sense. Sure, student-athletes have to handle a lot, but the fact is, they are by no means the only students with extra responsibilities.
If teachers gave leniency towards every student who had a lot on their plate than high school diplomas might as well be given out the first day of freshman year. Grade expectations for athletes should be just as high as everyone else’s; just because someone plays a sport does not mean they magically became unable to complete their work.
Personally, we find the allegation that student-athletes can not keep up with the rest of the student body and need special allowances insulting to all athletes as it assumes we for some reason are incapacitated.
Think of all the students that have graduated from AHS; no student-athletes got leniency then and they still graduated, so why should athletes get it now? In addition, the word student-athlete is indicative to the type of person AHS expects you to be. You are a student-athlete, school comes first.
Many coaches are understanding of this and work with students to manage their time and offer support and guidance. Football, for example, has mandatory study hall, as does many other sports.
Sports are a supplementary aspect of school and we at the varsity level understand that sports are a choice and a privilege.
As a school, AHS offers an environment that facilitates learning and assists with time management. Atom Time, if used wisely, is a great time to do homework, meet with teachers and work on projects. The problem is, every student, not just athletes, does not use Atom Time to its full potential and then goes home or to work or to practice and then complains they do not have enough time.
Student-athletes can definitely get a good balance of sleep, sports and school; it’s just their decision on whether or not they get that balance. When students complain that they have five to six hours of homework, we tend to laugh, because as seniors we understand the difference between the actual time it takes to do homework and then the time it takes to “do” homework. No one has six hours of real homework, the six hours is just a few hours of homework mixed in with procrastination, Facebook, food and friends.
We are not immune to procrastination. We do it too. We just do not complain about time management because we know it is our responsibility. In most cases, students do not want to take personal responsibility and realize that they just have to sit down and get the work done. No student is ever going to find time to do anything, you have to learn to make time.
Interestingly enough, all the IB Diploma Candidates, including seniors and juniors, are involved in not only school sports, societies and activities but also club sports, work, internships and outside organizations. Therefore, saying that students drop sports to do the Diploma Program is a misguided assumption that is insulting to all candidates that have an active role in school activities.
Furthermore the allegation that juniors and seniors, especially those in IB, do not receive the 3.5 award for sports is unfounded and is offensive to those of us who work hard every season to receive that award.
The article cites that national average GPAs for athletes vs. non-athletes do not differ greatly, so we are unsure how these statistics support the idea that athletes need leniency because the numbers show that they clearly keep up just fine. It is also important to note that sports are not the only avenue to learning responsibility, work ethic, social skills and manners.
All these attributes can easily be learned by students who hold jobs or even students who go home and sit on a couch; they are not exclusive to athletes. The mentality that sports are a “ better” extracurricular activity than anything else and athletes deserve leniency is unfair to the hundreds of other students that devote time and energy into activities and numerous other opportunities that AHS and life offers them.
The point is, student athletes are by no means an elite group of students that deserve privileges above other groups.
