Student athletes are a unique species of individuals who must delicately balance playing the roles of both a full-time student and a full-time athlete. At Milton High School, a large percentage of students are involved in school sports. One prerequisite for students attending Milton High is that they must take P.E. every year. This class is designed to fill a list of requirements including getting kids active, increasing their fitness, and teaching them about sportsmanship, teamwork, and the rules to a variety of games. However, I would argue that for students who participate in sports, P.E. is redundant. I believe that student athletes should not be required to take gym while they are playing a sport.

Student athletes receive adequate exercise while playing a sport. Practices are longer than the typical gym class. For many, practices are frequently two or more hours, while gym class lasts around one hour. In addition, sport specific workouts are more intense. These factors increase the athlete’s fitness. If playing a sport does indeed improve your fitness, isn’t it rather unnecessary to participate in a class who’s objective is to do that same exact task?

P.E. class also seeks to measure your athleticism through a variety of tests such as running a mile, doing the v-sit, or completing the shuttle run. However, I wonder if your flexibility, endurance, strength, etc. can be accurately measured after lunch or before a big math test. For individuals who play a sport, athleticism is appropriately measured during games, meets, or competitions. Again, this factor points to the conclusion that gym is rather redundant for students who participate in sports.

P.E. class strives to teach students about sportsmanship, teamwork, along with the rules to an assortment of games. This attempt is somewhat successful, but not completely. In gym class, the sport you play and the team you are on switch daily. This can be problematic seeing how individuals never get to experience the true feeling of repeatedly working together for a common goal. I believe that students who are on a sports team have a deeper, more profound understanding for sportsmanship and teamwork. They achieve meaningful wins and suffer through losses together. For individuals who participate in sports, gym class is unnecessary and repetitive because they learn the true meaning of these respective lessons while playing with their team.

I would offer a couple of solutions to this problem. First, I would suggest that throughout the time that an individual played a sport, they would not be required to take gym. Rather, they would have to take either a health or nutrition class. These classes would be equally beneficial to the athletes as gym would be to non-athletes. I would also suggest that instead of gym, athletes could have a study hall period, seeing as they have two or more hours of sports after school consuming their time. However, I recognize that this second suggestion could elicit some negative feedback from those individuals who participate in the musical or the music programs seeing as they put in just as much time after school as the athletes.