STOPPING SPORTS STATS

High school already is stressful especially during Junior and Senior year, being able to balance out stressful and pressured times is hard and makes you lose focus on what needs to be done and ready for the following days.

“I would say my past season was the most stressful time because junior year is hard in itself, and there was a lot of pressure for me to do the biggest skills on the team and stuff, so there was a lot of pressure from both school and gymnastics on me.” Pistole said.

Growing up in a sport causes many different changes and aspects of how you plan out your life. Trying to create a version of yourself in a sport that you are not enjoying or interested in pursuing, it creates stress and pressure which declines your wants of participation in that sport. Not only does pressure affect an athlete and make them want to quit, the coaches also play a big role in the act as well by how an athlete feels about themselves, and how critical they can be.

The most apparent action taken upon student athletes is the treatment from coaches. Coaches can be outspoken and not make it a fun environment. When this happens it increases the percent of student athletes that want to quit their sport. The amount of athletes that have dropped their sport starting at age 13 is 70%. That number is really high considering the number of athletes that would love to continue out their sport. Bad coaching and behavior is the main reason that students gain a feeling of pressure.

“I would say the last year was probably the most toxic environment I have ever been involved in,” Pistole said. “There’s a lot of very negative things and people, specifically coaches, were very rude and immature. They were treating me how a student or a younger kid should never be treated.”

Making a coach happy is an essential thing when being on a team. But, feeling like you need to be perfect in order to make your coach happy is the worst feeling to have. Showing up to practice or games needing to impress your coach to feel good at the end of the day isn’t what a student athlete should need to do. Athletes have a certain point where they reach their goal that’s good for them.

Story by: Corinne Zieg

When a coach tells you that you need to improve or get better still, that’s when the feeling of needing to be perfect comes in, and increases more pressure. Now, you might say that a coach is just trying to help, but their attitude and presence of help shows how it can have a bad effect on the athlete.

Sports aren’t always supposed to be fun and games, they’re for improving skills and getting better. With coaches that don’t help and just assume you have to be perfect in order to win doesn’t help the athlete prepare for games or competitions. It’s not only about coaches expecting perfection, it’s about how they are bringing up that athlete in a team.

If an athlete isn’t getting help in their sport and their coach is consistently playing or putting in the same people, where is the room for improvement? And why would an athlete still want to play when they show up to practice, practice on their own time, get better and not even get played? Coaches gain more focus on certain players more than others. This is also another reason that decreases their wants to play.

“I definitely thought that, if I didn’t win, if I didn’t do this perfectly, if I didn’t make every skill perfectly, she was not going to be happy with me, which honestly was the truth, so it wasn’t even in my head it was actually a real thing,” Pistole said.

Those athletes are the same ones that have always dreamed of playing for as long as they can, even trying to go to college and play their sport, but those factors can ruin sports for any student athlete. Whether it’s a coach, pressure inducing or just causing too much stress between school and your sport, it’s ok to quit. If you feel like you have to do a skill perfectly in order for someone to be happy with you, it’s not worth losing your self esteem. Sports are a huge time commitment which makes it hard to enjoy activities with school, family and friends as a whole. If you’re not content with a sport that you play and constantly feel pressured, having to be perfect or need to make a coach happy, don’t keep playing for them, do what’s best for you.

Percentage of Student Athletes Dropping a Sport