Article response

Amanda Ripley in the article The Case Against High-School Sports argues that high school sports should not be provided by the high school. However, high school sports are, the majority of times, beneficial and essential to the typical student.

Often times high school sports offer a special bond like no other. High school teammates often times become lifelong companions. High school sports are an easy way to make new friends. Imagine being a freshmen or a new student in a new high school seeing all these faces you don’t know. Making new friends can be a daunting task for some, but high school sports offer a way to create unbreakable bonds with new people. Many of my closest friends are from high school teammates. Sports bring people together and unite the high school together. Sports bring a special opportunity that makes students support others and help one another out. By playing on a sports team one learns many life lessons such as “working in a team environment”, “leadership”, and “discipline”.

Athletics in high school generates a lot of revenue for the school. Sports team are funded by user fees and boosters with only a small percentage of money from the school itself. Although the school spends more on athletics than academics the government spends more on academics providing financial aid and school improvements. The majority of the tax dollars the people play do not go towards a new turf field or new tennis courts, but instead go towards financial aid for students and improvements on the school itself.

To be able to participate in sports one must maintain a passing grade. This motivates many students who would drop out usually but makes them stay in school. As one sample of multiple high schools across the country show the dropout rate for athletes being .7 percent while for non-athletes the dropout rate is 8.98 percent. The desire to stay on the team keeps kids in school. Many people take a high school diploma for granted, but for many people it is all they have. High school athletics gives many students that high school diploma that they would not have received otherwise.

Citation

Ripley, Amanda. "The Case Against High School Sports." The Atlantic Oct. 2013. Print.

Sato, Kai. "The Case For High School Sports." The Atlantic Oct. 2013. Print.

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