DSP Essay

The Problems of High School Sports

In her article “The Case Against High School Sports”, Amanda Ripley argues that high school sports programs harm students academically due to the amount of money that goes toward funding sports as opposed to improving the academics. Though Ripley is correct in her assessment of the financial damage that can be caused by the United States’ emphasis on sports, there are other downsides to high school sports that Ripley only mentioned in passing – mainly, the high risk of concussion or other forms of injury, some of which can have permanent and devastating results. The amount of money that sports require, as well as the high risk of injury that it poses to students, make high school sports a dangerous waste to the American school system.

It is commonly argued that sports pay for themselves through ticket sales and concessions, but that it typically not the case. As tickets only cost a few dollars apiece, even best-selling teams will struggle to earn back their expenses, especially considering that the budget for school sports is often tens or hundreds of dollars. In 2011, the Illinois school Homewood-Flossmoor budgeted for $133,000 worth of expenses, while one Chicago-based school allowed for a $70,000 budget. In most schools, this money is never earned back, no matter how high a ranking they received. The school Glenbard West was ranked eighth within its state in 2011, yet in that same year, its ticket revenue was only enough to earn back less than seventeen percent of their $100,000 budget.

Meanwhile, the recession has caused many schools to face budget cuts. Illinois – the state from which the above examples were taken – received an eleven percent cut to its education budget in 2011. In addition, state funding for advanced placement courses, teacher-and-principal mentor courses, and research-based courses were cut completely.  Throughout the country, similar cuts were being made. Twenty three states cut millions – or, in some cases, billions – of dollars from their budgets, resulting in layoffs, loss of academic programs, and loss of assistance to low-income families. During times when many schools cannot afford to maintain the academic courses that they currently offer, giving sports programs thousands of dollars is a waste that is hurting the American school system.

The lack of academic funding is harmful to the students, and greatly affects the United State’s rankings worldwide. As mentioned in Ripley’s article, the United States has been largely outranked by countries such as Finland, which is ranked sixth, second and third worldwide in math, science, and reading, respectively.  Kenneth Kolson, a professor at Ohio State University, argues that Finland’s academic success is related to the fact that it offers no school-funded sports programs.

Many districts have attempted to lessen the costs by implementing pay to play programs, where the students must pay a fee in order to participate in the sports programs. In 2012, The University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health found that the average pay-to-play fee for high school sports was ninety-three dollars, though in some school districts, the fee is much higher. In 2008, Canton High School was forced to charge $495 per student for participation in high school sports. Though these fees lower the cost to the school, they have the negative consequence of excluding lower-income families, and increasing the metaphorical gap between students who can afford the fees and those who cannot. In addition, many argue that the fees are not enough. In areas such as the West Shore School District, which spends $150 million on sports every year, the fees will not bring in enough money to cover their costs. Brian Gustwhite, a member of the West Shore school board, stated that the money brought in from the fees “doesn’t even scratch the surface of what we spend” (as cited in Von Dobeneck, 2010). Though pay for play programs can help to lower the amount that a school must spend on sports, in many areas the financial burden on the schools is still steep, and the result is that there is still hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent on sports teams, instead of being used to fuel academic success.

In addition to the costs, high school sports also present a danger to the students who participate. In 2009, a total of 250,000 concussions were reported in athletes under the age of nineteen, which was a sixty percent increase since 2001. The large number of concussions is likely related to the fact that many school districts cannot afford the necessary safety equipment, though there has recently been doubts raised about how much protection the safety gear truly offers. In 2013, the NFL funded a study of the effectiveness of safety gear in preventing brain injury. In their three hundred and six page report, the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council states that there in no evidence to support the assumption that football helmets are capable to preventing brain damage. Though the director of the national program office for Aligning Forces for Quality at George Washington University, Robert Graham, acknowledges that more data is necessary in order to draw a firm conclusion, he does state that “the findings of our report justify the concerns about sports concussions in young people” (as cited in Farrey, 2013). Though concussions are far from being the only injuries to arise from high school sports, they are the most common, and the risk of brain injury makes high school sports – particularly football – a dangerous threat to the health of high school students, and can cause consequences that last for the rest of the athletes’ lives. In 2009, Boston University reported that they found signs of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy – a degenerative disease caused by repeated brain trauma – in an eighteen-year-old athlete who had passed away. Though CTE had previously been known to affect many professional athletes, this discovery was the first time that it had been linked to high school sports, and led the researchers to question whether sports such as football should be allowed to continue, given the devastating affect that it can have on the athletes.

Though the risk of concussion and other types of brain injuries is a real threat, high school athletes are at risk for a wide variety of other types of injuries as well. Of the estimated 1.3 million sports injuries suffered by high school students during the 2012-13 school year, 30.3% or injuries were to the knee or ankle, and 13.9% were to the hand, wrist, or shoulder. During this same school year, nearly ninety seven thousand of the injuries required surgery, and 17.5% of all injuries led to the athletes being unable or unwilling to play for the remainder of the season.

It is not uncommon for hundreds of thousands of dollars to be spent on sports each season, despite the fact that academic budgets are continually being downsized, and the fact that the United States’ are falling behind those of the rest of the world. Many schools have implemented pay for play programs in order to address this problem, but the programs themselves are often problematic, either placing such a financial burden on the parents that many students are unable to participate, or doing little to lessen the costs to the school. High school sports also lead to injuries and health problems among the students, with millions of students being treated for a sports-related injury each year. For the reasons listed above, Amanda Ripley was correct in her assessment that high school sports programs are hurting the American school system, and that the United States would do well to turn its attention to improving the schools academically, instead of focusing so much energy on the athletic programs that are causing harm to our budgets and students.

Sources

Boot, Max. "In Defense of Football." The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, 17 Aug. 2013. Web. 29 June 2014.

Boston University. CTE Center. BU CTE Center. N.p., 27 Jan. 2007. Web. 29 June 2014. <http://www.bu.edu/cte/news/press-releases/january-27-2009/>.

Bowen, Daniel H., and Collin Hitt. "High-School Sports Aren't Killing Academics." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 02 Oct. 2013. Web. 29 June 2014.

Bryant, Jeff. How Budget Cuts and Policy Mandates Are Hurting Our Nation's Students. Campaign for America's Future. National Education Association, n.d. Web. 29 June 2014.

Comstock, R. Dawn, PhD, Christy L. Collins, MA, and Dustin W. Currie, BS, comps. National High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study. Pediatric Injury Prevention, Education and Research Program. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, n.d. Web. 4 July 2014.

Conn, Steven. "In College Classrooms, the Problem Is High-School Athletics." The Chronicle of Higher Education. N.p., 15 Apr. 2012. Web. 01 July 2014.

Farrey, Tom. "Preps at Greater Concussion risk." ESPN. ESPN Internet Ventures, 31 Oct. 2013. Web. 29 June 2014.

Keilman, John. "High School Football Money: Programs Often Have High Expenses, Low Revenue." Chicago Tribune. Tony W. Hunter, 28 Oct. 2011. Web. 02 July 2014.

Pay-to-play Sports Keeping Lower-Income Kids Out of the Game. University of Michigan Health System. Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases, 14 May 2012. Web. 29 June 2014.

Popke, Michael. "With Budgets Tightening, Schools Struggle to Keep Sports Affordable - Athletic Business." With Budgets Tightening, Schools Struggle to Keep Sports Affordable - Athletic Business. N.p., Nov. 2007. Web. 29 June 2014.

Ripley, Amanda. "The Case Against High-School Sports." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 18 Sept. 2013. Web. 29 June 2014.

Toporek, Bryan. "Effectiveness of a State's Youth-Concussion Law Studied." Education Week. Editorial Projects in Education, Inc., 18 Feb. 2014. Web. 04 July 2014.

Von Dobeneck, Monica. "West Shore School District Debates Study on Pay-to-play Policy." PennLive.com. N.p., 16 Oct. 2010. Web. 04 July 2014.

Reflection

I began this essay roughly a week before it was due, and it caused me a large amount of stress. I went through more than three drafts, and the entire time I was writing, it was a struggle to find enough information to fill up an entire essay. I also struggled with insecurity, as I realized that I'd never written an academic essay such as this one before, and I wasn't sure if I was doing it correctly.

In the end, I managed to write an essay, though I didn't know whether I was happy with it, or how I should feel. It was because of my struggles with this essay that I chose to take the Writing 100 class, in the hopes of gaining confidence and learning how to write proper academic essays so that I can create essays that I am proud of.