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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yes
 Sports is the very last place in public school where students are actually expected to adhere to decent values like honoring your commitments to something other than your own self.
You admit practice is only 2 hours out of the day. So the test and tutors couldn't be scheduled for any of the other 22 hours? 
My kids have played intense sports and managed to do makeup tests before school, during lunch or free periods and doctors appointments etc during other hours.
I was thrilled to have them get a real life understanding of the commitments and sacrifices that are needed to excel in other areas of life.
Keep your meddling, snowflake coddling Karen hands off sports culture. The meddling has ruined every other aspect of public school. 
Please and thanks.[/quote]

As a non-American, the way I see it is that academics have been bending backwards for sports for a long time - no teacher would be allowed to act the way many coaches do. I think that in any other country, it would be considered insane to prioritize 2 hours of sports practice *per day* over everything else, unless you're at a national or international level. There are obviously not 22 hours left in the day, given... school, and also like, sleeping, commuting, eating. High schools start before 8 am and most people (unless they're on the swim team) don't believe it's reasonable to schedule things before school starts.

That being said, it's definitely true that once someone commits to something, they should try their utmost to follow through, whether it's sports, tutoring, a birthday party etc. There are times when things conflict and then you have to make a choice, but live with the consequences (like if you miss practice, maybe you'll be benched for the next game.)[/quote]
also non-American and I will never understand the sports obsession in this country at the HS and college levels. BTW OP-is this a certain HS in Vienna? [/quote]

Why not? We don't have local professional clubs and the professional sports that we do have are aimed at national fanbases. If you want to root for a local team, it's high school and college. [/quote]

(First non-American poster here.)
I mean, OK, I get rooting for your college team (though college sports have issues as well), but like... middle schoolers waking up at 4 am for club swimming, 15 year olds getting major injuries from overdoing track practice... (again, these are kids who are not going to "make it" in sports.) it all seems kind of crazy. I just don't think it's worth it for any "persistence" or "hard work" they may learn.

I did part of my education in the US and ran cross country my senior year. It was at a small school where anyone could join any sport (and we had no football team) and I was really bad. Some kids were good and our team would sometimes win state in the "small school" division, but no one was gonna do this as a career (maybe a couple kids would run in college if they went to a small colrge.) However, some girls would take 2-3 ibuprofens *before* each race as a way to preempt pain. Really? It seems insane to start doing this at age 14.

I have to say, my kids do some sports but we try very hard to keep it in perspective. For example, they're super into summer swim, which is sometimes 2 hours a day (often because kids like to spend extra time in the pool), but it's OK to skip practice and even have a conflict during the event (as long as you tell the coach ahead of time so you don't mess stuff up for the team). I also like the fact that it's mostly after the end of the school year. (Son would probably have been good enough to join a club as well during the year, but though he loves swimming, he said he wants to do other things as well during the school year, so just does lessons once a week.)[/quote]

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