1 minute read
Staying in Sports?
Today is the last day you’ll be at practice. You wake up, get ready for school and afterwards you spend your night at the sport that once made you so excited to show up for and be around the people that made you feel welcomed.
You played in several sports over the span of elementary school and fell in love with one, you played through middle school, and were super excited to be moving up on the team. As you grew up, that excitement faded when you realized that in that sport came with more pressure, competitiveness and overspoken coaches that wanted nothing but perfection.
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A student athlete shouldn’t want to quit their sport for these reasons, they should be able to enjoy it just as much as they did when they were younger.
Whether you are involved in football, soccer, volleyball, or basketball, and many more sports, have they ever made you think: “I don’t want to play anymore. What will my coach say to me today? I’m not happy here. I don’t want to go today. This practice has to go perfect for my coaches to be happy with me”?
High school students constantly fall out of joy with their sport because of the pressure, surroundings and competition. Why can’t the joy stay the same for high schoolers as it is for elementary and middle schoolers? What’s the change?
Elyse Pistole, a former gymnast who started at the age of 7, has recently experienced all of these factors which made up her mind to quit this past July.
“I feel like, as I got older and better, I definitely got really good at one point,” Pistole said. “And so I think with that, comes a lot of pressure to continue to be good and be really consistent. And so with that, as you get better, there’s a lot more pressure on it.”
Playing a sport during the school year, whether it’s for school or out of school, it can make it hard to stay on top of everything that needs to be done, going straight to practice from the long seven hour day at school, taking AP classes, college classes, others that are more advanced and that require a lot of projects and work to keep up with. Where’s the time for everything to get stuff done?
