Student-athletes call for more academic support

By Jade S.

Student-athletes face many challenges, from missing out on important classes to the accumulation of stress. Can CATS offer them a better support system?

During a student’s four years of high school, numerous students participate in extracurriculars such as sports, clubs, and after-school programs to make themselves stand out to universities or colleges.

Student-athletes often have to leave class early to participate in their games, resulting in missing their classes. In addition, according to students, some teachers make it extra difficult by ignoring their struggles. 

Jazmine G., an 11th grader, said, “This year’s academics are extremely important, and being a junior, the stress is very high.”

She struggled with this schedule of constantly being overworked saying there was not a single week where she did not have an assignment due the next day or had missing assignments in general.

Her schedule of leaving school extremely late to go home, eat, and then complete here assignments left her both mentally and physically exhausted at the end of the day. 

As a result, student-athletes often end up feeling unmotivated, which can lead to procrastination.

Samantha B., an 11th grader, said, “It was difficult to communicate with teachers.” She explained that some teachers were understanding of her situation while others were not.

She believes that there should be ways to give a helping hand to these students.

She suggested that the school should offer after-school tutoring specifically for student-athletes, or schedule the most important classes, such as AP or college classes, in the morning, so that, “If I have to leave for away games, I do not have to miss anything that is important.” 

Mr. Escobedo, P.E. teacher and basketball coach for Diego Rivera, said that students most definitely struggle to keep up with both their athletic and academic lives because when they go to games, they miss their important classes.

He said fortunately he did not have to face this problem. “At least for me, I had the benefit that instead of having a common core class, we had an athletic class for our last period of the day,” he said.

This meant that he had the core subject classes in the beginning periods of the day and had electives such as P.E. or art at the end of the day. 

This would make it simpler for students to make up work for their elective classes instead of struggling to catch up on their AP or college classes.