Get up. Go to school. Go to practice. Do homework. Go to sleep. Repeat. This is the daily schedule during the school year of junior Megan Kress. Kress is a member of the varsity women’s cross-country and track teams and is in the top 3 percent of her class academically. This academic success, Kress said, comes from self-discipline learned through her participation in cross-country and track.

Kress is not alone in her belief that athletic participation has many benefits. Some of these benefits were revealed in a recent study conducted by Angela Lumpkin and Rebecca Achen from the University of Kansas. In this study of 139,349 Kansas high school students, 44.7 percent were athletes. Overall, the athletes tested earned higher grades, graduated at a higher rate, dropped out of school less frequently and scored higher on state assessments than did non-athletes.

Aside from her success, Kress said she has learned many important lessons from competing in athletics along with academics at a high level.

“I think they both help each other out. I think the discipline I’ve learned in cross-country and track has helped me be disciplined in my schoolwork and studying and vice versa,” Kress said.

However, in order to be a high achieving student, many people argue that it is not imperative to participate in athletics. One example is junior Jodie Kim. Kim earns high grades and is also enrolled in all advanced classes.
Similar to Kress, Kim is a very successful student who is enrolled in challenging honors classes. Unlike Kress, Kim does not participate in any school-sponsored extracurricular activities. While both are very academically successful, Kress and Kim are motivated by different factors.

“I am self-motivated to get good grades. Nothing really motivates me. It’s just getting an A on a report card just feels good,” Kim said.
Kress, although also self-motivated, has additional aspirations of continuing athletics competitively after high school. Kress is also motivated to help her teammates.

“One of my main motivating factors is that I want to be successful in all that I do. I also want to get into a really good college someday, and can hopefully go on and be a doctor or do something important. A lot of the girls on my team are also strong academically, so I know we motivate each other to do our best and to always give 100 percent,” Kress said.

CHS Counselor David Mikesell said he has noticed this trend in other CHS student athletes as well.

“A lot of our athletes have aspirations of going on and participating beyond high school, so they know the academic portion of that is directly tied into it. I don’t know if they’re much different than the majority of our student body, but I think students who are athletes, particularly here, have to be disciplined,” Mikesell said.

According to Kress, the discipline that many CHS athletes exemplify in the classroom may be a result of lessons learned in athletics.

“I don’t think athletics have impacted me negatively at all, but I think it has positively because athletics have really taught me self-discipline, how to work really hard and how to manage things, and that just transfers over to school, too,” Kress said.
Similar to Kress, Mikesell said students can learn valuable lessons from participation in athletics. Most notably, time management skills.

“I think what athletics does is helps with time management. They have a specific allotted time for the athletics and they can’t afford to waste what free time they have, and so they are able to maintain focus in other areas,” Mikesell said.
Kim agreed with this assessment, and said she rarely gets to bed at an early time due to poor time management skills.

“I have friends who are in extracurricular activities and sports, but if anything, they seem to manage time better than I do. I think if you are involved in extracurricular activities you’re more experienced with being able to manage your time. If you’re not, you procrastinate a lot and waste time. Because I’m not good at time managing, I kind of never chose to do a sport,” Kim said.

Part of being able to manage her time, Kress says, is her ability to prioritize when necessary.

“Sometimes it’s putting going to bed the night before a meet before a paper that’s due next week. Or vice versa, an important test before sleeping in before a meet. Sometimes during the day on Saturday I’ll be home doing homework so that I can participate in my meets and practices in the week,” Kress said.

In addition to prioritizing, Kress said she must adjust her study schedule at times.

“For meets and practices, I’ll have to do stuff on the bus on the way to a meet, or in between my events at track meets,” Kress said.
Despite both Kim’s and Kress’s academic success at CHS, they both agree their schedules are manageable, but athletic participation at CHS generally helps students manage their time more successfully.

“A lot of people will be like, ‘How do you do all of that?’ And I’ll just be like, ‘It’s just time management,’” Kress said, “’And making sure you allot enough time for each thing and put things in priority.”