Multiple Sports

Pain is temporary, but GPA is forever. This is a common statement around school and social media these days by stating that school and tests are hard and pain full but you're going to continue pushing through because you need the good grades and high GPA for college and your future career. Something that I've always questioned is, how much do grades of athletes and non-athletes vary? If they vary at all? I've always wondered this because to me doing sports and handling my classes wasn't that much of a challenge until I got into middle school and had to learn to deal with 7 different classes, practices, and games. I am lucky enough to not have to work, so now that I got it figured out, and I am balancing 4 AP/Honors classes, 2 college cla sses, and 3 different sports with basically no problems. To figure out if there truly was a change in grades,  I researched the difference between athletes and non-athlete’s GPA’s.  I found an experiment done by Ryan Stegall, who g...

Wait, so sports help with more than just health? The answer is YES YES YES! Sports not only help to keep kids in great physical condition, but they also help them build characteristics in becoming who they are.   Chelsea Eytel, who graduated from the University of Troy and is now working as an author for the National Scouting Report , partially agrees with the fact that playing multiple sports is beneficial, but she points out that it is at the discretion of the athlete because the same things don’t always work or everyone. In her article "Multi-Sport Athletes vs. Single Sport Athletes - The Pros and Cons," Eytel states, “Playing sports provides kids with a lot of positive benefits: leadership skills, discipline, character, the benefits are endless. However, sometimes if athletes push themselves too hard, sports can become a negative part of their lives.” This statement is clarified that not only are there benefits, but there can also be major downfalls if the athletes don’...

Over the many years that I've played sports, I've had my fair share of injuries. For me, I noticed that I have more injuries when I play multiple sports at once, but they are less severe because my body is now conditioned to taking these types of hits and doing the same constant motion over and over. In an article written by  Jaime Duffek,  who graduated from Drake University and is currently the NCSA (Next College Student Athlete) Senior Head Recruiting Coach, titled "A Few Surprises in the Data Behind Single-Sport and Multi-sport   Athletes " she states,  “Limit overuse injuries: Overuse injuries occur when an athlete repeats the same motion over and over again. Playing multiple sports gives athletes time to heal and develop different muscle groups, tendons and ligaments.”   By this statement you can see that by playing multiple sports that require different muscle groups you not only avoid injury but you also develop more and new muscle groups to p...

For me, soccer is year round because I not only play for my high school, but also for a club travel team that plays on weekends rather than weekdays. I had only played soccer up until my freshman year of high school when I was first introduced to playing football. Now I know you may be thinking that this really isn't that big of a deal, but for me it was because this wasn't a girls football team, it was tackle with the guys. It all began my freshman year, my brother (a senior) was the varsity kicker for my high school's football team. One day he told me the coaches on JV were looking for a kicker and he recommended me to come out the next day and tryout during their team practice. All was well, I went to the practice/tryout and made JV! A couple years, and some practicing later, and now in my junior year I am the starting varsity kicker! And not only am I getting interviews from places like  The News Journal   on how I got started with playing football, but also I tied ...