The Student Before the Athlete
Editor’s Note: Statistics and data in this piece are accurate as of Friday, October 18th.
“When you have practices and games that are physically tiring, the challenge of doing homework after is so mentally taxing. With all of us having the experience of being student athletes, we know how difficult it is to keep your grades up while also balancing performing at a top level in your sport as well.”
Out of all the students in Comp Sci High, 17% are Studen-Athletes. Out of these Students-Athletes, a shocking 62% are currently failing. Because of how Comp Sci High has structured its system to help each student reach their best ability, this is super disappointing.
We felt that we needed to get to the bottom of why this is the case. This is especially important, since student athletes have much less time on their hands than the average Comp Sci High student. When you have practices and games that are physically tiring, the challenge of doing homework after is so mentally taxing. With all of us having the experience of being student athletes, we know how difficult it is to keep your grades up while also balancing performing at a top level in your sport as well. So with this being the case, we have to find out whether this is a systemic issue when it comes to the school not supporting the student athletes enough, or if it is the fault of athletes just not getting these school requirements done.
Lately, a lot of teams have been missing games. Teams like flag football have missed 1 game and are on their way to miss way more, as 73% of the students on the team are currently failing a class.
We asked the coach of the flag football team, Mr. Stewart, how he felt about his team having so many failing players. He said: “I pondered whether I was helping our players with resilience in the classroom or putting them in a deficit they can’t come back from.”
The team has put their coach in such turmoil as to whether he has been coaching these kids correctly or if he has been failing them as a coach. It almost seems like there is an imbalance on how coaches approach this type of situation, as, in the words of Coach Stewart, “players volunteer for check in’s, but with the ineligibility they are not able to experience diving for the touchdown marker or making that one handed catch in traffic. They are not watching game film or celebrating the 4th down stop to win the game.”
It seems that, as players even try to raise their grades so they can play, they give up a lot of practice. On the other hand, if they focus too much on practices, their performance in the class can decrease.
The soccer team is in the same predicament when it comes to players failing, as they have 12 people out of the 19 on the team who are currently failing. This has also led them to miss 1 game out of a season that has only recently started because of how many players they have who are ineligible. Not too many know much about the soccer team, as it is a new sport, but to hear that more than half the team is failing is ridiculous.
According to a student who wanted to remain anonymous: “This is on the players because they aren't doing the work, not going to office hours in their free time and not attending mandatory office hours.” Hearing student statements, there are some teams who are paying attention to their academic grades and others who are more lackluster. To hear from an athlete that their team is not attending mandatory office hours placed by the school to help athletes who have little time on their hands, is very disappointing, especially at a school like Comp Sci High. We came with a goal to find out if this problem was a systemic school issue or just find a reason to help implace a better system for these student athletes, but what has been found is very discouraging to hear. This leads to the question: are coaches just allowing these things to pass by and not caring enough about these kids’ academic success?
The volleyball team has the most passing players of all the teams and because of that they've seen a lot of success. Other teams have had to forfeit games because they didn’t have enough players and have lost games because of not having their best players in the game. And that's another problem: the best players are usually the upperclassmen. This sets a bad example for the underclassmen who are learning from them and following in their footsteps. After interviewing Ms. Marisa, the coach for the Comp Sci High volleyball team, we were told that she chose her team based in part on their academic strength. Her reasoning was this: it made no sense to have spaces taken up by people who wouldn’t be able to play. After all, having available players is a necessary thing, especially because the volleyball season is so short that it will almost certainly be over by the time you read this.
In our interview with Comp Sci High’s JV Basketball coach, Mr. Reardon, I asked him: “What effect have the losses and forfeited games had on you and your team?” He said: “To be honest in terms of wins and losses, not much.” But, he continued: “Where the impact is bigger is in terms of building culture and relationships.” Even though the team has had success winning games, a lot of their players were not a part of these games and didn’t experience the excitement, which can cause a separation that might build up slowly. It can turn into an argument of “you didn’t help win.” These little things can turn into big feuds that can destroy a team's most important asset: chemistry. I remember back in 2023, before the flag football team won their championship, one of the QB’s got mad at their loss and blamed the team for being bad and not catching or defending good enough. And after he was kicked off the team, we ended up winning without him.
Through our interviews we have noticed a pattern, and that pattern is that missing players will affect the school and teams whether it's financially and emotionally. What we mean by this is that when the teams are missing games because of forfeits, the school is still paying for the team to participate in the league — that's the financial problem. The emotional problem is that when teams win games without these non-eligible teammates there is no longer a synergy with that part of the team. This leads to disconnect and, like Mr. Reardon said, it negatively affects team culture. When we asked Mr. Ayala whether there has been talk about disbanding teams, all he gave us was a thumbs up. And with that, do as you wish.