Why Don’t More Athletes Play Sports?

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Commentary by Micah D'Angelico, Author

Santa Fe High has many strong athletic teams, but they still often lose to smaller schools. SFHS is a big school with more students than most other schools, so why aren’t they winning? Maybe it’s because so few of those students actually try out.

Demon football hasn’t won a game in years, and everybody’s wondering why. Some people say it’s the coaches, some say it’s the players, and some say it’s both. But looking around at the games, there seem to be more athletic kids on the bleachers than on the field.

A lot of students nowadays just don’t think playing high school sports is worth the end goal. Because what is the end goal? One SFHS athlete, Tate Palmer, said, “Why play football for four years if I know I’m not gonna make it to the NFL or even college? I might as well do something better with my time.”

Many students today don’t think sports are worth the payoff. They are discouraged by a lack of reward and a high risk of injury. Some think all it does is make school harder and maybe give you a medal at the end of the year. Most players know they’re not going to make it to the NFL or the NBA or MLB, so why play on the high school team?

A few decades ago, many more students played sports. Gary Fiorina, a former SFHS athlete and coach, says that when he was a student at SFHS in 1965, there were 80 to 100 football players. Currently, there are half as many. There are 1,464 students at SFHS, so the pool is there. But fewer students participate.

A typical athlete’s day consists of going to school for seven hours, then going straight to practice for three hours, and then going home and doing homework for two or three more. Many students feel that playing a sport makes school more stressful. Students go to college and get degrees without high school sports on their resumes, so why play sports? And for athletes wanting to be recruited, nowadays there’s so much competition that only exceptional athletes get recruited anyway.

The issue remains: Not enough students at this school are motivated to participate, and the lack of participation by capable athletes demotivates other players, so the teams — especially football — just gradually get worse. Many students are discouraged at the thought of joining a football team that’s 0-27. Students need a rush of motivation to feel like they can turn around those statistics.