College Student Sports

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It is a known fact that sports in general are a great vehicle for teaching life lessons to people of all ages, especially our children. Exposing children to sports beginning at a very young age has been shown to provide many benefits to them as they grow into adolescents and then adults. These sports and their related activities, whether it be football, baseball, soccer, band, cheerleading, color guard, or the debate team are a demanding activity that improves a student’s self-discipline and leadership skills. Student sports is a life enriching activity that should be a priority because it benefits a student’s overall physical, psychological, and emotional development, even though there can be negative effects dealing with overly competitive …show more content…

At the college level, a student athlete will spend a majority of their time training with their team. Joy Gayles, professor at North Carolina State University, and Shouping Hu, a professor at Florida State University state, “The NCAA has responded to public criticism by limiting the number of hour’s student athletes spend on athletic activities (e.g., competition, practice, conditioning, etc.), restricting the number of student athletes who live together on campus, and requiring academic support services for student athletes at Division 1 institutions”. Because of the amount of money that is involved at this level, most teams must be run like a business organization. Millions of dollars are at stake for the university so it makes sense that there must be a lot of time devoted by the athletes to their teams. Another reason to reduce the amount of time devoted to sports is the college experience that they could potentially miss out on. The educational side of college is full of opportunities to interact and learn from their classmates and get involved with activities on campus that aren’t sports related. After calculating the results of their survey, Gayles and Hu stated, “The evidence from this study supports that exposing student athletes in meaningful ways to their non-athlete peers make a difference in terms of how they view themselves, their cultural attitudes, and reported gains in learning and communication skills. This finding supports the powerful educational effects of creating opportunities for student athletes to interact with their non-athlete peers in college.” Colleges must continue to push for a sport-education balance in order to ensure that the student athletes go through college acquiring the necessary skills to carry them into being a successful

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