Sports Vs. Academics

From winning a trophy in recreational soccer as a child to getting a full ride to Florida State University on academics alone, there is a huge discussion on whether using sports or academics makes you a well-rounded person while growing up. Teachers, students, scientists, universities, and many others hold a stake in this debate. While conducting a poll on twitter, I found that 82% of people believe that playing sports while growing up makes you a more well-rounded individual. 68 people were involved in this poll. In 2011, 8.3% of undergraduate students received private scholarships, for academics, that averaged about $2,796. Only 2% of all high school athletes will receive a scholarship. In a Delta Cost Project by the American Institutes for …show more content…
There has been an increase in the number of overweight children in the last ten years with the rise in television and gaming consuls. Per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of obese children between the ages of 6-11 in 1980 was 7% and that number increased to 18% in 2012. The percentage of obese children between the ages of 12-19 went from 5% to 21% in the same amount of time. These numbers show a dire need for children to be taught to be healthy and active from a very young age. There have been recent debates on whether or not Physical Education (PE class) should be taken out of elementary schools and high schools to increase the amount of time that kids could be in other core classes learning more. François Trudeau and Roy J. Shephard did a research study on whether this would be beneficial. What the two found was that this was actually the opposite of what the school boards thought. When children have a required class of physical education their grade point average increased and their ability to perform in a certain amount of time. The two concluded that if there was an additional hour of activity, it would be even more beneficial to students. These two examples show that schools can help fight child obesity while also helping their students maintain a better grade point …show more content…
The amount of kids going to school on an athletic scholarship is way less than teens who are going for academics. Only about 2% of high school students will move onto participating in college sports and of those 2%, only another 2% will move to professional sports. According to the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), there are eight million high school kids playing sports and out of that only 480,000 students will play at the collegiate level. This means that although coaches may build up the impression that there will be many students moving onto professional sports but in reality, there will only be a couple students from each school doing that. Children should be focusing on learning as much material and scoring well on the ACT/SAT as they can before moving to