Recently, there has been a common predicament throughout Tahoma High School student athletes. Students are dropping their sports left and right due to the overwhelming aspect of balancing school and their sport.
Students do not have the ability to properly reset with the amount of time they have in a week, and the amount of responsibilities they have in one day. According to the article, Mental Health Issues Remain on Minds of Student-Athletes, written by Greg Johnson, he states, “student-athletes reported lower levels of hopelessness” (Johnson) than students themselves. Hopelessness is well known as the key aspect of depression and can even induce the idea of suicide throughout students.
Lucy Lewis, a student at Tahoma High School, recently stopped playing softball. When asked why, Lewis replied with, “It made me extremely stressed out over everything. I never had time to do my schoolwork, but I couldn’t miss practice” (Lewis). Over time Lewis admitted to falling behind on her work due to the overwhelming stress that eventually pushed her to give up on school work. She added, “I feel confident in my decision to have dropped softball because now my grades are going up” (Lewis).
Another student from Tahoma High School named Alison Rohrbach intends to do the same thing, drop her favorite sport, soccer. When Rohrbach was asked the same question, she responded, “It was super overwhelming to play at the same time because I felt like I never had time to myself and I could never have time to relax” (Rohrbach).
Rohrbach’s issue has the potential of spiraling downwards according to the sports blog, Rest – The Hidden Benefits To Student Athletes. In the text it argues, “Without enough rest, teenage athletes put themselves at a greater risk for injury, with one recent study in California recording a 57% injury rate for student-athletes getting less than 8 hours of sleep per night.” Implying that student-athletes lack the rest they need, which could potentially result in an unfortunate injury.
The physical and mental health of student-athletes continues to be a concern. Learning ways to manage their time could be a huge benefit, but needs as much support as possible for students to learn how to do so on their own.
