Introduction
Youth sports programs take a subordinate position in the minds of many people worldwide as they perceive them as inferior to academic excellence. Schools and families fail to emphasize the importance of balance when it comes to school work, ignoring aspects such as P.E. and other physical activities related to learning.
Many students are excellent athletes and posit high performance in this sector. However, a school may decide they would not participate in sporting activities if they do not have good grades. This blind-sided assumption of academic importance over sports has led to a skewed understanding of the role sports play in the world and for school-aged students.
It is prudent to discern the importance of sports for the overall positive development of one’s life as focusing on a particular aspect, academics, relegates sports to irrelevance in a person’s routine, ignoring physical fitness to achieve academic greatness continually. Sports help boost a person’s healthcare, enable them to work well with others and allow people to gain financial freedom by nurturing talent.
Promoting Healthcare
Sports participation boosts health and wellbeing. Individuals participating in sports are confident and likely to indicate better mental health than their counterparts who do not perceive the importance of these activities. The University of Missouri dictates that sports positively affect the brain by stimulating reward pathways while strengthening mood-boosting neurochemicals such as dopamine (MU, 2021).
Higher levels of dopamine and other neurochemicals in the blood lead to well-being while reducing one’s risk of developing anxiety and depression. These illnesses are among young people’s most common mental health disorders. In another study, Malm, Jakobsson, and Isaksson argue a person that conducts regular exercise experiences significant gains in their nervous system, a factor that lowers stress levels (Malm et al., 2019). Regular exercise’s positive impacts on the brain lower young people’s potential risk to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs seeking a distraction and relief from stress and mental health ailments.
Obesity in many developed countries is a significant and severe problem for young people, a factor that sports participation alleviates. Wyszyńska and other researchers conducted a research study concluding that limiting sports in schools reduces students’ capacity to participate in outdoor activities that would help them lower body weight to normal levels and avoid obesity (Wyszyńska et al., 2020).
Exercise is an excellent way to regulate body weight. Keeping active is a positive way to maintain or lose weight. It reduces a person’s risk of later contracting heart illnesses, diabetes, osteoporosis, stroke, and various cancers. Experts agree that sports play a significant role in mitigating possible obesity among school-aged learners. Sports provide a healthy option for students to reduce fat and improve blood flow and overall health.
Enhancing Teamwork
Team spirit cultivates collaborative habits in students and promotes activities that motivate combining efforts to achieve a particular goal and is vital to creating a vibrant team. Researchers determine that this skill will enable students to achieve a successful career. It would further enable learners to gain a position in leadership or to work as an influencer.
Gregory argues that students participating in sports understand the essential nature of good communication, utilizing constructive feedback, supporting others, or requesting help (Gregory, 2020). These learners continually learn to balance their strengths and weaknesses against fellow students. The University of Missouri experts claim that sports participation improves a student’s potential to work efficiently within a team (MU, 2021). These activities require students to adhere to set guidelines dictating the sport. A person who works with others is predictable and does not make unilateral decisions as they affect everyone in the group. In this way, sports are a positive way to improve compliance in the workplace.
The writer contends that students do not only gain benefits applicable at the workplace from sports but form good personal relationships in terms of romantic partners or friendships. Success in these areas needs compromise, communication, support, and willingness to work with a team for a specific objective. Teaching these learners such skills at an early age via sports makes them more likely to have adequate skills when interacting with others later in life.
Economic Growth
Learners spend the majority of their time in the school environment. Therefore, a specific student’s sporting talent is more likely identified and nurtured in this environment. The school’s role is crucial to provide the learner with relevant input to improve their skills. A sports teacher plays a significant role in determining and helping students evolve and boost their performance (MU, 2021). Early identification of a learner’s sporting talent is vital as children are highly receptive to compliments and appreciation in their formative years.
Downward and various acquaintances state that these students achieve financial freedom and grow due to organized training (Downward et al., 2019). Schools play supportive and active roles by developing well-articulated programs, including committed coaches, good pitches or courts, and training equipment. This is a major investment in the children’s future career prospects as athletes may earn a lot of money depending on the sports, leagues, or teams. Therefore, schools should improve their sports orientation to give gifted students a chance to earn from sporting like their academic counterparts.
Conclusion
Schools should focus on sports more than they currently do due to their importance for personal and professional development. Sports have various positive connotations for students, such as promoting economic growth, enhancing teamwork, and promoting healthcare. This is an important topic to consider as sports should play a more prominent role in the education system as it is integral for physical and mental well-being. Sports teach valuable skills that are not achievable by chiefly focusing on academics. In this way, a well-rounded individual is likely to achieve more tremendous success than one with a unilateral focus in life, that is, sports or academic orientation.
References
Downward, P., Frick, B., Humphreys, B. R., Pawlowski, T., & Ruseki, J. E. (2019). The Sage Handbook of Sports Economics (reprint). SAGE.
Gregory, P. (2020). How sports help students to develop best qualities. West London Sport. Web.
Malm, C., Jakobsson, J., & Isaksson, A. (2019). Physical activity and sports—real health benefits: A review with insight into the public health of Sweden. Sports, 7(5), 127. Web.
MU. (2021). Benefits of sports for adolescents. Benefits of Sports – MU Health Care. Web.
Wyszyńska, J., Ring-Dimitriou, S., Thivel, D., Weghuber, D., Hadjipanayis, A., Grossman, Z., Ross-Russell, R., Dereń, K., & Mazur, A. (2020). Physical activity in the prevention of childhood obesity: The position of the European Childhood Obesity Group and the European Academy of Pediatrics.Frontiers in Pediatrics, 8. Web.