Should High School Athletes Get Paid?

2:00- school ends; 2:30- board the bus; 3:30- arrive at the field; 4:15-8:15- JV and Varsity Games; 9:15- arrive back at school; 9:45- arrive home, repeat 2-3 times a week throughout fall season. But the day doesn’t end when arriving home, it is still necessary to eat dinner, help around the house, complete all homework, study for upcoming tests, shower, and get ready for bed and school the next day while still attempting to sleep for a healthy 8 hours. When school starts at 7:45, it is essential to wake up at around 6:30, and that means 10:30 is the time needed to fall asleep, to be healthy, leaving less than 1 hour to complete all of the activities listed above. The athletes, in reality, end up getting about 6 hours of sleep and in some cases even less. This leads to sickness, uncompleted homework, and/or bad test grades. Consequently, grades suffer for athletes, and their future health could as …show more content…
Good quality school sports are a very important factor in choosing which high school to attend. Every kid wants to be a part of a winning team or at least be able to attend winning sports games. Therefore, the coaches and athletes are pushed hard and forced to attend long practices and of course be ready and focused for the game by having silent bus rides and mandatory team bonding activities. The love of the game keeps the kids playing the sport, but they are pretty much punished by their teachers for doing this by concrete deadlines for homework and tests. Each night I tend to have about 4+ hours of homework, from AP U.S. history essays to Spanish essays of the same demanding quality. The argument could be made to not take as difficult classes if sports are that important, but many athletes also need good grades to reach the schools of their dreams or to be