High School Athletes on Honor Roll for Sports

Joe Smith

Mrs. Giordani

Literature & Composition

13 April 2015

High School Athletes On Honor Roll For Sports

Introduction

Attention-getter: Colleges look for the best athletes in the country to be apart of their teams. But what good is it to be confident in a sport that you may not even be able to pursue after college? According to NCAA statistics in 2014 and research, “the amount of players who play professionally after college is a round total of 2%,” says staff writer Zach Rice. That means that just last year “about 98% have to evaluate everything they did in college and then see what real-world job they want to pursue.” "Unfortunately, we don't really talk about it very much or prepare athletes for it," says sports psychologist Caroline Silby.That’s where the education part comes in to play. Why not be able to play a sport in college but better yet, have the grades to support you throughout? With that huge weight lifted off your shoulders, your possibilities are endless on what you could do on and off the field.

Credibility: (Included In Attention Getter)

Thesis: After doing a lot of research and having personal experience with this subject, I have come to a conclusion that high school athletes should be on the honor roll to play in games.

WIIFT/Tie To Audience: What if you were the athlete who was sitting on the bench because of your grades? Wouldn’t that give you a drive to work harder so that you’re able to play? Or what if you’re in your senior year of college looking to become a pro but no professional team drafts you to play for their team. You want to be able to rely on your grades to help you if ever needed. School should be a main priority followed by sports incase something like this were ever to happen.

Preview: The point that I’m trying to get across here is first, the problem being why student athletes aren’t getting good enough educations and getting accepted to colleges, second, the causes for that happening, and finally, the solution that we can take to correct all of the mishap and conception.

(Transition To Body: Let’s start by looking at the problems relating to the concept of student athletes.)

Body

Problems

The first problem that is one of the most important is that high school students aren’t getting accepted to colleges because of their grades. When colleges look for athletes, they always begin with grades and then athletics, and a lot of students don’t have the GPA aspect of the requirements which leads them to get declined.

The second problem is that student athletes aren’t getting a good enough education. “When in school students are getting a very minimal education compared to a non-student athletes,” says Rice. Even if a student were to make it to the pros, what happens afterwards? The pros don’t last forever. People get old, injured, and tired of the same thing. You’re probably going to want to continue to work and earn money, but how do you do that with the education that you received that wasn’t standard for any well paying job?

The final problem relates with us directly at Malvern. When playing a sport here, the only thing that is stopping you from playing or continuing to play is to be failing a class. This being said, what are we to learn from this? That we can play until school literally means nothing to us because that’s what it’s making us athletes do. We have no drive to be educated or to learn because as long as you’re playing a sport you technically don’t have to learn until it’s necessary.

(Transition: Now that we’ve seen the extent of the problems, we can explore their causes.)

Causes

The first cause to all these problems would be the media. The media does whatever it can to get you interested or to do something. Since they publicize everything they do, anyone can see it and be informed. One idea they cover the most is sweet talk sports, especially high school going into college sports. They get you so hype and intrigued that you just want to go out and do it for yourself.

The second cause to the problems we have discussed would be the types of salaries that sports and athletics have to offer. The paycheck that most athletes get is an absurd amount that you couldn’t even imagine getting from normal jobs that are applied for. The reason why this affects us would be for the fact that it gets us hooked onto seeing such a huge number that we want it for ourselves. This is unhealthy for us because according to Alex Stephens, a student himself, “the only thing that seeing a salary does to us is give us a motivation to put more towards athletics and ignore studies.”

The third and final cause of the problems would be the amount of focus put towards athletics rather than academics. Students are so focused on trying to get accepted to college through sports and scholarships, rather than worrying about school and the more important parts of being accepted to college.

(Transition: Now that you understand the reasons why it is important for athletes to maintain honor roll status, let’s look at the solution to this problem.)

Solution

There is one solution that can solve all of these problems and make every student's life a whole lot better. This would be to make it necessary for all athletes to be on the honor roll in order to play in their sport of choice. By making this a requirement, it starts off letting students retain a better education since they must learn