One of the best things you could do during your high school years is joining an extracurricular activity. Hillcrest High School has a large variety of sports and activities for students to join. In my opinion, participating in these many different sports has made my high school experience more memorable and enjoyable. It’s always recommended to give different sports and activities a try, so that’s what I decided to do. However, being a student athlete is not easy. Besides your activity being challenging, there’ll be plenty of days where you have to decide between your extracurricular and your grades, which for me is the most challenging.
Everyone tells you that you have to be a student before an athlete but how could you choose when you really love your sport/activity. This is because, if you’re not careful with balancing your time you will begin to slack in one or the other. I’ve personally experienced slacking in both my schooling and my sport. Sometimes I would have to attend practices everyday, after school, spending at least an extra 5 hours there. Due to extensive practices I would mainly be exhausted and aching when I got home. This alone made it extremely hard for me to submit my work and meet strict deadlines as well.
As a student athlete at Hillcrest High School, it is mandatory that you maintain passing grades. If you don’t, that could result in you not being able to practice with your team, participate in games, or all in all, being removed from the team. Dealing with this ultimatum can make students overwhelmed and careless. As I experienced these troubles I often found myself not caring about maintaining my grades nor being a part of my extracurricular anymore. This was simply because of the overwhelming decision between the two.
I overcame this by prioritizing one class at a time achieving a better grade as I went on. This then led to me regaining more time I could spend participating in my sport and other after school activities. Being able to balance my time better I regained my love of being a student athlete. Even though it could be challenging at times you’ll feel better when you know you have the ability to be on top of your grades and have time to interact with your school as well.
