Balancing Act: Student First, Athlete Second

Balancing Act: Student First, Athlete Second

Natalie Arbuthnot, Reporter

At Hillcrest, they have a saying “student first, athlete second”. It essentially means your school work comes before your sports do. If you have bad grades, you are not allowed to practice or play in the game until you get that grade up. Although this rule seems pretty easy, a lot of people still struggle with playing sports and keeping their grades up. So, it got me wondering, is it hard to keep your grades up when playing sports?

I interviewed two different people who play a bunch of different sports. I asked them a bunch of questions about school and sports, and they both had similar answers. Senior, Makayla Deloach is involved in softball, swimming, and cheerleading. When asked about having a schedule for making time for school work, Makayla said “It all just kinda depends on when I have freetime, because when softball season is around you have practice everyday for 2 hours. So usually I have to wait until after softball practice to do it. Cheer is only one day a week, so I’m usually okay those days. Swimming kinda gets in the way a little bit, because there’s meets almost every other day.” Even when doing hard classes like AP Psychology, Makayla still manages to get her school work done and keep her grades up. 

Makayla says that if she has to be taken out of school for a softball game, she will usually get the homework done on the bus or during the JV game. Makayla says that the phrase “student first, athlete second” really comes into play when trying to work on homework because she knows that if she doesn’t get her homework done she CANNOT play in the game. She didn’t want to let her team down, because sports have always been important to her and her family.

Coaches really try their hardest to push the “student first, athlete second,” and they make you finish your homework before playing. She stays motivated in sports, because her dad played a lot of sports and she stayed motivated in school, because her mom is a teacher. Makayla says that communicating with your teacher really helps you find out what assignments you need to do if you’re going to be gone. If you fail your classes at the end of the semester, or at the end of the school year, you are not eligible to play the next season.

The second person I interviewed was freshman Austin Miller, he is involved in basketball, soccer, and football. Even when playing all of these sports, Austin’s school work still gets finished, and he keeps his grades up. Honors classes are classes that give you more challenging work, and you get a higher GPA if you pass the class. Austin takes one and he still manages to pass his class and get his work done. If he has to study for a test, and he has a game or practice, he’ll sometimes stay up later to work on it. His parents are also super strict about getting your school work done, if his work doesn’t get done the sports drop. Austin says that if you’re actually paying attention to your school work and not goofing off or one your phone, it’s not hard to get your work done.

Now to answer your question, is it hard to balance academics and sports? The answer is, NO. If you talk to your teachers about stuff that you need to do, and you actually try in school and pay attention, school will be really easy. You get so many privileges when you finish your school work.