Students and Sports
Adriana Thompson explains the top reasons why students participate in sports.
Sports are a significant part of the educational system today. Centuries ago, school systems did not see the need to include games in their list of activities. Yet, many students wonder why it is now made compulsory to a certain degree. There are even factions of students who actively avoid even the slightest hint at a sport-oriented event. Guardians and school authorities should frown at such acts of negligence.
How Do Sports Help Students?
Sports influences are subtle but very evident in academics. Often, students notice improved welfare, but they fail to understand how it relates to their games' lifestyle. Moreover, some students hope to emulate similar results but do not appreciate sports well enough.
This write-up is about the gains in participating in sports while a student. It is time for you to see the world of school-level games through a different lens.
Time Management
Sports is a time-specific activity; many decisions that scholars make during gameplay are time-dependent. Athletes learn to value the nature of time understanding, and that procrastination is the thief of time.
Time management is an essential skill every student must imbibe to achieve success in college. They make use of this skill in various activities, such as essay writing. Students employ the service of the duplicate content checker, as these aid with checking plagiarism when writing an essay. Using an online checker helps to save the time and effort needed in identifying plagiarized content.
Fitness
This is by far the most desired reason for game activities in school. Sports are the best means to keep fit and stay healthy. At the same time, you are having fun while you are at it. It is noticed that classes with low sports rates have higher sedentary lifestyles. A sedentary lifestyle at a young age is hazardous and can lead to health complications. This, in turn, can adversely affect a student's general academic performance.
Also, sports enhance growth in students. Teachers should encourage games, especially among teenage students undergoing puberty. These activities help to stretch joints and ligaments in the body. Constant stretches make the spine and certain body parts of growing with more ease. An example of this is with students that play basketball or volleyball; they tend to grow taller than their peers.
Intrapersonal Skills
We can all agree that sports are emotional activities. It draws on suppressed emotions that we may not be aware of. Sport is a marker of one's level of emotional intelligence. Helping students build on their intrapersonal skills is one of the benefits of sports for students.
Emotional intelligence is your ability to have full knowledge of your mental state. It requires mastery of your fears, weakness, triggers, and strengths. Sports, to a great degree, expose all these aspects of one's psychic.
Sports is a good distress activity. During seasons of heated activities that cause stress, games are a good way to cool off. People can use games to let off some emotional steam. This is a proven psychological method that works. Athletes use sport as a coping mechanism to balance strong feelings of anger, disappointment, and frustration.
Creativity
Sports call for a level of conscious creativity. For example, games force students to think of ways to outwit their opponents. The resulting methods employed may be unconventional or new. Generally, the more unexpected it is, the higher the tendency for it to work as long as the actions are permissible under the rules of the sport.
In the classroom, students are free to import ideas learned in the field in addressing academic problems. These ideas can then be modified to fit different purposes suitable for academic activity.
Team Spirit
As the saying goes," all for one and one for all". This is seen mostly in games that require team cooperation. Athletes learn to put their self-interests second to the team's interests and beliefs. Students who play the same sports as a team develop esprit de corps through games.
Sports teach the value of unity. Cultural, religious, ethnic, and racial barriers cause a lot of segregation. While on the field of play, scholars discard all filters, everyone is the same. This teaches students to accept each other for who they are and not accept stereotypes.
Students with self-centred traits do not do too well in sports. It reminds students that sometimes everything is not all about them. They develop an eagle eye to see how their actions affect the bigger picture. This bitter realization helps to deter narcissist attitudes from emerging.
Thinking Prowess
It is still not evident why, but sociologists have noted that athletes think more proactively. Perhaps this is due to the nature of games. For example, a sportsman has to reduce his response time in diverse situations while judging his opponent's moves simultaneously. This can be referred to as intelligence.
Intelligence is the ability of a student to hold two or more contrasting ideas simultaneously. The brain is trained similarly to muscles. This means that constant practice makes these complex, intelligent actions seem effortless. This reactiveness is not limited to the field of play alone. The ability to think proactively is translated into all other spheres of the student's life.
Improved Academic Performance
Generally, athletes are required to meet a minimum performance in their academics. This requirement serves as an incentive for students. Having already better developed thinking faculties, students find samples in essay writing easier to understand. Multiple online studies support this fact.
Views of Life
A student well engaged in sporting activities is naturally more lively and open to ideas and different opinions. They may not necessarily accept all views presented to them, but they are better enabled to assess them. Empathy from a neutral standpoint is a necessity in sports.
In all sports, your ability to sit back, observe and understand the events unfolding is what makes you exceptional. Such students develop the ability to understand the cause and effects of decisions made by themselves and other people around them. They are sensitive to their surroundings.
Sport teaches chance, appreciation, and humility. Athletes learn that their successes are not entirely deserved. Similarly, they know that the failures of others are not wholly deserved either. They understand that time and chance make life unpredictable, providing both favourable and unfavourable situations to everyone.
Personality
You can tell a lot about a student's personality by watching them play certain games. To many who are unsure how to start addressing undesired personality traits, sport is a start. The key here is to find the sport that embodies the qualities you want to teach. Then start playing it, making sure to carry through till you get your results.
Sports is one of the best natural ways to teach specific values to students. This learning process is sometimes done on a subconscious level. Values like patience, resilience, honesty, integrity, and commitment to service can all be learned in various sports.
Travelling and Networking
Sports act as a social platform to have a well-knit circle of friends and to travel the world. Competitions that come up allow students to visit different parts of the world. On these trips, they are forced to meet and interact with diverse people. They get the chance to sample other cultures and lifestyles unknown to them. This is an exposure that cannot be achieved in classroom settings, even with online sources.
This exposure reflects positively on one's writing skills. With writing being an integral part of college, student-athletes get a boost at excelling in college.
The place of sport in student's life is undeniable but sadly underrated. Scholars should see sport as more than just an extracurricular activity. Students who engage in sports experience the above-listed benefits and much more.
Page Reference
If you quote information from this page in your work, then the reference for this page is:
- THOMPSON, A. (2019) Students and Sports [WWW] Available from: https://www.brianmac.co.uk/articles/article502.htm [Accessed
About the Author
Adriana Thompson is an author who earns her living as a freelance writer. She is writing a children's book, hoping that someday she will become a famous writer.