Student-athlete academics at risk from sports

Jasper Winterton
Feature Editor

“If I have a student who’s a struggling math student and also an athlete who gets out early a lot, it can really make it challenging for that student.” Matt Siebels, math teacher, said.

Students have been repeatedly missing school in their last hour class due to sports, which according to students and teachers, has made it harder for them to catch up in class and maintain good grades. Along with the individual struggle athletes experience, when there is a miscommunication with the school, it cuts down class time and causes students to lose focus.

“It’s constant like individual attention, like taking care of this one person so they know what’s happening, and it kind of breaks up the class time where you can lose focus of students,” Siebels said.

“Coaches usually are really great, and the activities office gives us a spreadsheet every week that is very detail oriented and tells us the kids that aren’t going to be here or will leave early. However when things like today happen, a bus situation is usually the problem.” Siebels added that there’s a bus shortage, which is the main issue.

Jerry Collins, athletic activities director, also mentioned that if it weren’t for the lack of transportation, teams wouldn’t be dismissed early as often as they are. “Over the last 2 years specifically, it’s been much more of a regular occurance.” Collins said.

The school used to get out earlier, but since the all school dismissal time was changed, it’s become harder to get athletes to games on time without them missing part of school.

“(unexpected dismissals) happen specifically at the request of the bus company, so if there’s a driver out sick or a shortage of buses, they need to pick up athletes early” Collins said. Some teams have rented out mini-vans that the coaches can drive but most rely on the buses who also have to drive students home, giving drivers a short period of time to bring athletes to games, get back to school to drive students home, pick the athletes up, and bring them back home.

“I had a student last year who was in multiple sports so they missed a lot in the fall and a lot in the winter, and it just kept going, so it’s definitely impacted students’ grades in my class,” Siebels said.
Lula Pondrom, freshman and member of cross country, has also had this issue.

“I left class once due to cross country, it was more towards the end of the day but it did make me miss an assignment,” Pondrom said.

“We’ve heard concerns from parents, from teachers, from athletes themselves- it’s not preferred,” Collins said about the missing work athletes have been struggling with.

Jasper Winterton-Feature Editor This will be Jasper Winterton’s first year on ECHO staff. He made several contributions while taking journalism class his freshman year.

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