With the level of high school education increasing the expectations for high schools athletes is directly affected. Most high school athletes are dealing with high stress levels due to the rising expectations of sports teams.

            Many teens strive to be varsity athletes but feel the pressure to be good students as well. In our society, more and more parents are pushing their kids to be their best and want them to have better than they did.

However, sometimes the pressure from parents, students and fellow teammates can be a little overbearing.

            Colleges now are looking to accept not only good students but socially well- rounded students too.

How are we supposed to be able to be socially well rounded when we can barely balance school, work and sports practices?

We want to have a personal life but we are so caught up in trying to be the ‘best’ and planning ahead for our future, that it’s a struggle to do things outside of school.

            For some sports, you may even miss full days of school because you leave to go to a tournament of some sort. It makes it even harder to try and make up work as well as keep up with what the class is doing when you get back. Some teachers are very cooperative and supportive. However, others are not very forgiving about it.

            When parents talk about the ‘good old days’ they always say the best time of their life was high school. As it seems, no one of this generation will have very fond memories as the work load and stress from sports continues to rise. Most varsity athletes are required to stay until the end of their team’s meet, game, tournament, and those can go as late and are sometimes on school nights.     

When that happens it leaves very few hours left to have to eat, shower, do homework and then get to sleep and wake up early again. Some sports even have morning practices making their athletes wake up even earlier.        

How are we suppose to be able to get enough sleep to stay sane, focus at school, not fall asleep at school and keep up at practices.

            “There’s no time because all the time has to go into sports to be good [at it] but you also have to keep your grades up,” explained Brendan Fontes, a junior on the Placer soccer team.

His classes include AP US, AP Calculus, Mechatronics and Drafting. He said his classes do suffer because he doesn’t put enough time into them. He doesn’t stay up until 1 to finish his homework; instead, he chooses to sleep.

            Sports seem to become more and more competitive with every year; just as academics do as well. At some point, teens will start to suffer greatly. When the students start to become so stressed that it affects their bodies, it becomes a serious problem. And that may very well happen because of the lack of sleep many teens are experiencing.

 In order to fix this the school needs to be more involved with students that are participating in sports.    

Varsity athletes should have the right to rearrange their schedule due to their sports season and sports coaches should also understand that when an athlete asks to leave early it isn’t that they don’t want to participate with the team, but rather, they are trying to keep up with everything.