Academics VS Athletics
SJHS has many champions within its classrooms, from athletes to academics to artists. How do we celebrate them as a school?
Students attend school to learn. School, in its simplest form, is for the education of adolescence. This raises a question: when the point of school is learning, why is it that athletics hold such social and celebratory prominence among students and staff alike?
The benefits of athletics -- personal health, teamwork skills, and more -- for students are undeniable, but to what extent should this undeniability allow inequity amongst groups to be acceptable? SJHS is a high-performing academic school, and yet, our hallways and trophy cases hold very few plaques and awards for academic honor, while a glance in our own gymnasium shows us flamboyant trophies and banners depicting every SJHS athletic success.
While the gap dividing athletics and academics at SJHS is shrinking, the partition remains ubiquitous. Furthermore, there are fundamental administrative, social, and societal issues that contribute to this divide, but they will not be highlighted in this article. Instead, we will focus mainly on the issue in its simplest form at SJHS.
(top row left to right) Sophie Confer, Sam Ebbert, Preston Nichols, Jacob Halsey
(bottom row left to right) LSJ Hockey Team, George Weber, Nolan Wertenan, Karly Klaer
It is nearly impossible to make the claim that athletic and academic achievement are celebrated equally. In an interview with National Merit Scholarship winner George Weber, 12, he corroborated the previous claim, saying: “[when I won,] a couple people congratulated me, but on the whole, it seems like most people didn’t know what happened.” This lack of acknowledgment and praise over a tremendously difficult and impressive academic success highlights the problem perfectly.
Now, imagine for a moment the varsity football team wins the state championship… On a smaller scale, imagine that an SJHS tennis player or golfer makes it past states, and wins at a national level. The energy surrounding these teams or students within SJHS would be ecstatic, and yet, until doing research on the different champions within our school, I didn’t even know Geroge earned such prestigious academic honor.
These issues come down to the concept of interest. In our day and age, students are more interested in sports than the Academic Challenge Team or the Math Club or DECA. This makes sense, considering these groups’ association with schoolwork. As a student, I can understand how this could be off-putting, but nobody is asking the entire school to dress up for the Math Club or theme a Spirit Week around the next orchestra concert. No, these are not the goals. The goal is acknowledgment. The goal is equity.
George says later in the interview, “I find it very telling that there is an entire section of the morning announcements devoted to sports, whether there’s anything to report on or not. There have been multiple times this year where they’ve said ‘Hi this is ____ with sports, they didn’t give me anything to say, so back to you ___.’” While his award was mentioned George later talks about how his award wasn’t mentioned on the school news at all.
Chris Jordan, 9, is a tennis player and swims for SJ. He added to the previous claims, saying: “I, and I assume most athletes and students, have no problem with the celebrations of academic success. I also don’t think academically focused students have a problem with the celebration of sports and athletic achievements.” This helps show how students within SJHS have no issue with the equitable celebration and encouragement of both academic and athletic success. This equity, though, is not there.
Greater academic achievement, for all students, comes from the acknowledgment, encouragement, and celebration of academic successes.