Athletes running down the sidewalk, playing on basketball courts, or swimming at the beach characterize California’s public spaces. Indeed, athletic culture in the Golden State is difficult to ignore.
However, teenagers played less sports than ever during the 21st century in 2021, when 1.2 million less students regularly played (CDC, 2021). Exercise is the best medicine, which is to say that physical activity is the best preventative measure one can take for disease and aging (Harvard, 2014). They also, when in moderation, are proven to promote mental health. Therefore, it seems a reasonable goal to enable students to explore athleticism freely.
In a world where sports provide students with scholarships to dream schools and may potentially pay their bills as adults, many teens don’t want to engage with the uber-competitive athletic landscape. The hyper-competitive nature of increasingly talented high school athletes may leave other students feeling separated from their peers and uninspired to pursue sports.
Studies cite several reasons teens may not play sports, including a high barrier to entrance, social pressures, and fear of failure. Some reasons students may not feel encouraged to play sports could include a lack of qualities that athletics promote, like self-efficacy and confidence. Therefore, students who have little athletic experience struggle to engage in meaningful physical activity.
Author Ardavan Afrakhteh Downhill Mountain Biking with his Dad
After all, students on the varsity basketball team didn’t pick up the ball for the first time in high school. Schools should acknowledge that students who perform well on athletics teams achieved their talent through hard work and time to emphasize that beginners can enter athletics. The goal of athletics, especially in publicly funded educational institutions, is to uplift our generation’s youth and to enable them to tackle our country’s problems. Some ways schools can promote sports is by lowering the barrier to entrance, such as having secondary practice teams for less talented athletes. Students may not have had the resources to engage in after-school sports as children, so giving them space to explore athleticism while they are still teenagers could greatly benefit their lives.