Similar to how all events and decisions in life comprise of an array of advantages and disadvantages, participation in sports and other forms of physical activity are no different. In the United States, many teenagers and their families are highly intrigued in organized youth sports. Not only does physical activity benefit one’s body physically, psychologically, socially, and emotionally, but more specifically, high school student athletes, male or female, project enhanced standardized test scores and show proof of higher academic success when compared to non-athletes. These advantages from physical activities result in healthier body systems that lead to a longer life expectancy. As far as being on a sports team, there are numerous skills learned that aid in a academic success, as well as a future that holds endless possibilities as the adolescent grows into adulthood.

Physical activity has many advantages relating to the human body, especially in a physical sense, which aid in maintaining strength, endurance, cardiovascular well-being, and proper blood circulation. Clinician Donna Merkel reports, “seventy five percent of American families with school-aged children have at least one child participating in organized sports” (Merkel). Organized sports, such as school or community-controlled sports teams, are known for promoting activity and healthy lifestyles that lead to a healthier physical body. Physical activity aids in caloric loss, while also building muscle, decreasing time spent with electronics, like TV watching, and reduces unneeded snacking, all of which can be detrimental to the human body in excess. Athletic activity helps to better one’s immune system by fending off sickness, like a cold, while also lessening one’s risk of cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. People who are inactive are more susceptible to certain chronic conditions, like high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, and high triglycerides, in which can be eliminated or highly reduced with aerobic physical activity, or also known as cardiovascular activity. As stated from dictionary.com, aerobic activity is, “relating to or denoting exercise that improves or is intended to improve the efficiency of the body’s cardiovascular system in absorbing and transporting oxygen” (dictionary.com). Some of these activities include, biking, running, elliptical training, rowing, walking, and swimming. Since exercise enhances blood circulation, maximizes coordination and endurance, and prevents bone loss, these benefits of activity can ensure greater longevity. In sport activities, both cardio and muscular endurance play a role. More cardio endurance permits the engagement of a repetitive action for a longer period of time without being exhausted too easily; likewise, muscular endurance also allows one to execute several muscle contractions for a prolonged period (Rail). In order to activate these two parameters, basketball, football, and soccer are great sports to get involved in. Exercise also helps to prevent osteoporosis, a condition in which the bones become weak from diminishing bone mineral density. By engaging in weight-oriented activity, such as running, jogging, walking, dancing, stair climbing, and tennis, the bones are strengthened and bone mass is built to fight the beginning of what could become osteoporosis. All of these advantages of physical activity lead to living a longer and healthier life. Heart disease has been one of the most common ways leading to death; however, according to the American Heart Association, “an active lifestyle can reduce coronary heart disease by 30 to 40 percent. Additionally, moderate exercise can reduce your chance of getting a stroke by 20 percent, which increases to 27 percent with regular, intense physical activity” (Crowe). Therefore, those who are more physically active show a longer life expectancy and considerably more significant benefits to their body when compared to those who are not as active. In fact, the National Cancer Institute explicates, “the relationship between life expectancy and physical activity was stronger among those with a history of cancer or heart disease than among people with no history of cancer or heart disease” (National Cancer Institute). This research confirms the notion that vitality and a greater longevity are results from more physical activity.

Although exercise has numerous advantages relating to the physical sense of the human body, physical activity also presents many mental and psychological benefits. While sports condition the body, they also have effect on the mind by elevating one’s mood from the release of neurotransmitters, and by improving brain function used daily while at work or school. Michael Babyak, Ph.D., and his research team conducted a study that examined how sports participation can make someone less depressed. Similar to drugs that aid in mediating depression, physical activity can also produce varied changes in the brain to help with this mental illness. At the University of Bern, in Switzerland, neurobiological adaptations through sport and physical activity were examined, “the strengthening of the epinephrine activity ensures the release of various factors for nerve growth. These factors promote cell growth in the brain and prevent the death of cells in the hippocampus, which is otherwise caused by depression. Together with these changes, sport and physical activity also lead to a reduced activity of the stress hormone cortisol and therefore have an effect similar to psychotropic drugs” (ScienceDaily.com). As physical activity has beneficial effects on depression, it also assists in improving anxiety. An article in the “American Journal of Psychiatry” noted, “researchers chemically induced a panic attack in the two groups of subjects suffering from an anxiety disorder: one who had just finished exercising for 30-minutes and the other who had rested during this time” (Scottsdale). Both groups became more anxious after the injection, yet much fewer members in the exercising group had a panic attack compared to the other group who just rested. In both conditions of depression and anxiety, exercise has proven to help lessen the effects of each and maintain stability. Aside from mental illness’, participating in sports also tends to cause people to lose weight while gaining muscle. This causes people to look better and more physically fit as it improves their self-perception. Since the Association for Applied Sports Psychology officially lists “improved self-perception” as a psychological benefit of exercise, a study published in the journal “Pediatric Exercise Science” worked to prove credibility by “using a large sample of 6,923 adolescents. Among both male and female teens, level of exercise was associated with feeling better about their body image” (Scottsdale). This also deals with confidence and how someone has more confidence overall if they are happy with their body image and not feeling very depressed and anxious. It has also been reported that daily tasks are easier to complete with increased energy, in which most athletic people possess. By adding physical activity into one’s weekly routine, enhanced self-confidence and independence correspond to improved mental well-being. 

Apart from just exercising and participating in physical activity on one’s own, team sports have a huge impact on someone socially. To start, being on a sports team builds positive role models since team athletes are always working with a group of other people. Many of these other athletes become leaders and positive role models that help to motivate the group as a whole. In particular, coaches tend to play a very important role in an athlete’s life. Those most likely to obtain the positivity of a role model to carry into the rest of their life are typically those who have had constructive and motivating mentors when they were younger. Building positive social relationships is a very good attribute to acquire as it sets up a future of continuing to get along with people and building meaningful relationships wherever one goes. Team sports allow athletes to grow within a supportive environment while gaining a set of skills that are very significant to one’s character. Paige Maslen, Associate Director of Marketing, Media, and Public Relations at Army and Navy Academy, expresses, “while it might not be as obvious as sitting down and discussing a group project, team sports take a lot of communication – both spoken and unspoken” (Maslen). Whether the team is listening to a pep talk in the locker room, detecting nonverbal cues given by other players, or conveying a thought during a post-game debrief, communication skills are crucial in preserving a successful sports team. In Jill Prudden’s book “Coaching Girl’s Basketball Successfully,” she notes, “players are expected to express their concerns, hopes, and disappointments to their coaches and teammates” (Maslen). The players are also encouraged to get feedback from not only their coaches, but also their classroom teachers, since this further promotes the usage of communication shills that will help them to also succeed in their academic aspirations. Participation in sports also helps athletes learn critical decision-making skills that will be advantageous to them during a game, as well as outside of the sport. Sports create pressures that can push a player to need to make a snap decision, or use their “fight or flight” instinct to make tough decisions in demanding and stressful situations. This ability to function under pressure translates to a person who in the future will be better at completing deadlines and operating in difficult situations. Next, teamwork is a huge skill that is utilized in sports in order to work together with other teammates to attain a common goal. By being in a setting with diverse personalities, athletes are most likely to become cooperative, patient, and determined, and responsible. The Janssen Sports Leadership Center states, “working with teammates teaches athletes important life skills such as to respect one another, act in unselfish ways, make good decisions on behalf of the team, and not cut corners” (Maslen). These skills learned as a result of being a part of a team will continue into everyone’s future as wherever one goes, there is always some sort of contact with other people that requires familiarity and respect of these skills in order to work together and stay focused on a goal.

After considering all the benefits to physical activity and playing on a sports team, there is strong evidence that athletics correlate with a student’s academic achievement in the classroom and on standardized tests. When taking a survey of high schools, the relationship between athletics, athletic leadership, and academic achievement enabled conclusions to be drawn that athletes have an increased performance than non-athletes in every subject area tested. Researcher, Lipscomb noted, “athletic participation is associated with a 2 percent increase in math and science test scores. In addition, sports participation was associated with a 5 percent increase in bachelor’s degree attainment expectation” (Yeung). Beneficial effects on school grades, coursework selection, homework, education and occupational aspirations, self-esteem, university applications, subsequent college enrollment, and eventual education attainment were all correlated with participation in high school sports. Physical activity was seen to affect attitudes and academic behavior by enhancing concentration, cognitive skills, and improved classroom behavior, as the mental benefits and involvement on a team help gain recognition and development of important life skills. Director of the Division of Adolescent and School Health for the Centers of Disease Control, Howell Wechsler, evaluated fifty studies that inspected how school-based physical activity affected academic performance. It was noted that “half of the studies showed positive associations and virtually none of the research demonstrated any negative impact. Multiple studies demonstrated that even relatively short spans of physical activity helped increase the duration and intensity of concentration following such activities, including those in which the students never left the classroom” (Bliss). This proves that athletic activities do enhance concentration, which helps boost success in the classroom. In fact, Wendy Owen, a writer on the website OregonLive.com, “quotes high school football player Zack Hickman, who points out that his sport requires to him to use his head and demands that he’s always learning from his experiences on the field – feeding expectations and habits in school” (Bliss). By playing on a sports teams, students learn responsibility, discipline, time management skills, and leadership skills that all carry over into the classroom, and furthermore into the future of their adulthood. As a policy in most schools, athletes can only play in games if they are passing their classes. This can provide motivation for some students to be more successful and work harder for better grades if they are on the border of failing yet want to play in their sports games. Tom Welter, executive director of the Oregon School Activities Association, “concedes that not all athletes are natural students; however, the grade requirements to stay eligible and play the sport they love drives them to overcome obstacles in the classroom and improve performance, establishing a work ethic that can serve them for as long as they remain in an academic setting” (Bliss). All of these skills student athletes learn while being a participant on a team serves a purpose that leads to more success in their academics when compared to non-student athletes. 

Although there seem to be many benefits that sports provide to kids and teenagers, there are also a handful of reasons that could hinder one’s academic performance, one being time management. Many students, whether a participant or not of a club or sport, already stress about exams and essays; however, student athletes have even more of a reason to be stressed since they have less time to study for exams and write essays along with their hectic sports practices and games. Team travel also serves as a stress factor because of probable missed classes and assignments the student encounters. Along with just stresses of academic-based aspects, parental pressures can also cause anxiety that has a very probable chance of negatively effecting an adolescent’s education. For an adolescent to feel that he has to be the starting quarter back, consistently make a majority of the basketball team’s points, or even if a parent is pushing their child to be the best athlete on the team for possible collegiate athlete recruitment, can really cause detriment to a child’s ability inside the classroom. However, while a student could very likely struggle with these academic stresses, many have said the pressure caused by tight schedules allows them to thrive academically. Senior field hockey player Leah Ferenc from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, commented, “Most of my peers believe that they perform at a higher academic level while participating in their sport and have felt more organized and motivated during their seasons to do well academically. I am more successful at completing my assignments during the season, because I know that I only have a certain amount of time to do so” (Altobelli). Although time management can be difficult for some student athletes, learning how to properly assign time to complete homework, essays, and study for tests at a younger age helps the adolescent more in the long run as an adult by developing productivity skills for when they have to continue to balance a career and family.

There are endless advantages that participating in physical activity or playing on a sports team provides to adolescents as they grow in the classroom and into adulthood. Many skills that athletes gain while being on a team, as well as physical and mental benefits from physical activity will stay with the adolescent as they form relationships, maintain academic success, and search for and keep a job in the future.  
