HS Sports requirement good or bad?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To me it means bloated rosters with kids who will never see the field/court

I think it is great for schools to strongly encourage sports, but I do not think requiring HS sports is helpful or needed. I might not mind so much if schools were not insisting that all (or nearly all) students have a school day from 8 something to 5:30pm or 6pm. If the local top schools would let all of the non-athletes leave campus anywhere between maybe 3:45 and maybe 4:30pm, that would be a huge improvement.

My top-1 school in a different metro took that other approach. Their rosters were not bloated by non-athletic kids who did not want to be there. JV/V sports practices were 4:15-5:30pm. Otherwise all students were dismissed at 4:00pm. There were similar levels of homework to top metro DC schools, but the students were not artificially sleep deprived. The school consistently placed multiple students at very top schools (HYPS etc.) every year. There was (and is) a Lacrosse to Ivy to Wall Street pipeline, in addition. There were no special issues with making friends or having social opportunities with that setup. So I see the local custom of -requiring- sports in 2 or 3 seasons each year as both unnecessary and not very helpful.

I realize it will not change. People dislike any form of change. Do an6 status quo will continue for decades or centuries…

Local custom? Which school other than STA and NCS require three seasons of sports for every high school year?

StA website says they do not require 3 sports - at least in the last year. Potomac requires 3 sports activities, but weirdly winter musical reportedly counts as a sport. At least StA, Potomac, NCS, and Sidwell have -very nearly- the same sports requirements for Upper School grades..

Potomac requires two activities per year. One of those must be physical (musical checks this box) and it doesn't have to be a team sport. It can be yoga or weights/conditioning that doesn't involve competition. The other can be some non physical activity like debate, robotics, managing a sports team, or fall/spring play.

Is the yoga/weight conditioning 5 days a week and for how long?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:By the time the kids get home, eat, shower, it's 7pm. If you have 3 hours of homework a night, there's not a ton of give in that schedule and certainly not if you wanted to do something else.

The schools want your kid’s life to be within the school community. No, you can’t really do something else on weeknights. If you have an outside activity, then you need to plan ahead with homework. It’s feature not bug and if you can’t understand that then you don’t appreciate what it is to be part of these schools.

Also, if some kids had all these extra hours to do the work that might have a chilling effect on athletic participation among kids who would otherwise want to play but are worried their grades will suffer relative to peers. And athletics are a wonderful way to build bonds with classmates (even if you aren’t great) and wonderful for mental and physical health.

Nonsense. All of these schools have athletes who will be recruited- those are some of their best looking college admits. Those kids all have to play club year round and the schools know it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:By the time the kids get home, eat, shower, it's 7pm. If you have 3 hours of homework a night, there's not a ton of give in that schedule and certainly not if you wanted to do something else.

The schools want your kid’s life to be within the school community. No, you can’t really do something else on weeknights. If you have an outside activity, then you need to plan ahead with homework. It’s feature not bug and if you can’t understand that then you don’t appreciate what it is to be part of these schools.

Also, if some kids had all these extra hours to do the work that might have a chilling effect on athletic participation among kids who would otherwise want to play but are worried their grades will suffer relative to peers. And athletics are a wonderful way to build bonds with classmates (even if you aren’t great) and wonderful for mental and physical health.

Nonsense. All of these schools have athletes who will be recruited- those are some of their best looking college admits. Those kids all have to play club year round and the schools know it

PP here. I agree with you there. My comment above was directed more at people whose kids are not doing sports outside of school. Agree that it’s a grind to do year round sports and school sports every day, but don’t know what the solution is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When our child joined the new private, the sports requirement became a great avenue to make friends. The school is k-12, and yes, many new kids in 9th (when she started attending), but the team is where she made friends

You can do that without is being a 3 sport per year requirement though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DS is looking at sports with requirements and schools without. Prep, Landon, St. John's, Sidwell, Potomac, STA. How different does that make the experience? Overall are you happy your school has one or does not have one?

if you don’t like it then don’t apply to that school. Very simple. I like it for my daughter because it means she feels less stress and is in a better mood after exercise each day. She does xc and voyagers (rock climbing) or dance, and then track or crew in the various seasons (and what she might try next year. At NCS) It is great team building at the school, you meet people you don’t have classes with or are out of the friend group you form. I also think it allows them to feel more confident joining Rec or club sports in college if they aren’t the sort to play at a higher level. We need healthy kids and mental and physical health stems from movement!
My other child is very physically active and athletic and is at a school without a sport’s requirement beyond pe one year. If my daughter went to that school she would likely not be nearly as physically strong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When our child joined the new private, the sports requirement became a great avenue to make friends. The school is k-12, and yes, many new kids in 9th (when she started attending), but the team is where she made friends

You can do that without is being a 3 sport per year requirement though.

Some of the sports are less intensive options look into the details.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DS is looking at sports with requirements and schools without. Prep, Landon, St. John's, Sidwell, Potomac, STA. How different does that make the experience? Overall are you happy your school has one or does not have one?

if you don’t like it then don’t apply to that school. Very simple. I like it for my daughter because it means she feels less stress and is in a better mood after exercise each day. She does xc and voyagers (rock climbing) or dance, and then track or crew in the various seasons (and what she might try next year. At NCS) It is great team building at the school, you meet people you don’t have classes with or are out of the friend group you form. I also think it allows them to feel more confident joining Rec or club sports in college if they aren’t the sort to play at a higher level. We need healthy kids and mental and physical health stems from movement!
My other child is very physically active and athletic and is at a school without a sport’s requirement beyond pe one year. If my daughter went to that school she would likely not be nearly as physically strong.

I should have made it clear she does not do sports outside of school. And likely would not want to. But she loves school sports.

[Anonymous]

Bad idea. First if all not all kids like sports and that's ok. But, what about who are unable to do sports due to medical conditions. This is something that I don't think most ppl take into consideration.

[Anonymous]

Of course there are options or waivers for kids with physical impediments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bad idea. First if all not all kids like sports and that's ok. But, what about who are unable to do sports due to medical conditions. This is something that I don't think most ppl take into consideration.

Huh? Not all kids like history or science too. Physical activity is important. Of course there are waivers for physical abilities which you’ll know severe ones don’t typically go to the schools we’re talking about on here.

[Anonymous]

My own school built intra-mural athletics/sports into the school day schedule, which started a bit after 8am and ended at 4pm. The only kids who stayed after 4pm were on the various (optional, but no one was cut) JV or V sports teams during that sport’s season. The school had challenging content-filled academics, was top-1 in a its (non-DC) metro, with top-10 college admits and top-20 matriculations as strong as any of the “big 3” here. The school’s lax team was a feeder to several Ivys (and then to Wall St jobs), and that helped get a small number of extra kids into Ivys in a typical year. Activities such as debate, model UN, or language-specific clubs also fit into the standard school day (i.e., ending at 4pm).

I am fine with the notion of requiring participation in some sort of physical activity and/or other clubs/ECs, but I know from experience that such a requirement need not require students to stay late at school for 2 or 3 seasons of the school year. So my gripe with several local schools is not the activity requirement, but instead with their _choice_ to schedule it in a way that keeps kids at school much longer than is really necessary. The schedules the schools have is absolutely under their control and I wish they would not choose to make most students stay late for most (or all) of the school year.