Its 10 P.M. after a long night of blood, sweat, and dirt. I finally arrive home after a horrendous three and a half hour baseball practice. I bust open the old maple wood door and run to my cool leather couch. I sit down, take my hat off and debrief after all of the madness. I’m exhausted and I still have an insurmountable amount of homework. I can’t even keep my heavy eye lids open and my entire family is sleeping. It’s such a tease. I am a student athlete and the most important part of it is being a student. Being an athlete and coming home so late is ruining the “student” part. Part of being a student athlete is being able to accomplish the task of succeeding in both aspects. I am unable to do this getting home at 10 P.M.

I’m not the only athlete that has struggles with this on a nightly basis. Most athletes in my school have this struggle. According to a survey I passed out to other student athletes, 48/50 students said that they would like another gym. They said this because they get home so late from practices if you have the late slot. They also said why. The main response for the question “Why?” was because of grades. 48/48 students who said they want a new gym said there grades have had a drastic decrease. The most important question was what your GPA was before you started your sports compared to what it is now. Before students started their sports the average GPA was a 3.3. Once they started sports the average GPA dropped to a 2.9. That is not good if you want elite student athletes.

Stress is a big thing that affects many human beings lives. The athletic director at my said something along the lines of “creating a new gym would take the stress away from players, coaches, and ultimately take it away from me.” . He also said that adding another gym would get students home sooner to finish their work and studies and also get a healthy amount of sleep instead of going to bed at their normal 11:30. From his experience he has seen many close calls. By this many kids have almost been injured by others because we have to have three teams practicing at the same time. If you added a new school you would never encounter such a problem. Putting athletes in danger and not being able to have a good amount of space to work with will not help the performance of the students and the teams as a whole.

A team will not perform to the best of their ability unless they have a happy coach. I interviewed the baseball coach at my high school. He was not when I asked him about this subject. He said when it is raining and we have to go inside it is limited space. Not only is it limited space but they have the late slot so they get out of practice at 10. “How will my players perform academically if they get out of practice so late.” said by the baseball coach. He also said it would make our school better as a whole because we would have more space to utilize so we could do more things to help the athletes become better. Also they would have more time for work making our athletes smarter than usual. The main point emphasized in the interview is how our athletes would become better students if there was a new gym.

I believe that the school should add another gym. Athletes are getting home to late and can’t do school work because they are so fatigued. There is not enough room for all of the teams and it is becoming very dangerous. The future of our athletes in our school will be very bad if they do not add a new gym.