Nick Flucke

Mrs. Coco
English 1201
4/26/16
My audience is high school students who are considering playing sports but
are unsure how it will affect their grade or parents who is unsure if they want their
son or daughter to play because grades come first.
I am stilling having some problems with the transitions from paragraph to
paragraph although I think the subtitle make it not such a big issue because they
lead the writer in the right direction on their own. I am also concerned that I may be
using the wrong voice for the audience that I am addressing, thinking that maybe I
am taking too laid back of an approach and can use a little more complex sentences
and structure. The most important thing I would like to have checked is my in text
citations. I would just like to know that they are all done right and that I will have no
problems or more importantly points taken off in that section.
Since the beginning of time people have been sorted into groups. Indians who
could not kill animals were gathers Indians who could make successful hunts were
hunters. In more modern times particularly in high school kids are put into two main
groups, smart and dumb. For years every one characterized the athletic kids or the
jocks as part of the dumb group but did they even look at their grades or compare
them to the non-athletic kids? I grew up in what I would call a typical family
household. I was a typical kid that wanted to spend every second of every day
outside, rain or shine. My first love was baseball. My all Star team and I traveled
around the southern U.S. hitting homeruns and taking home first place trophies. In
2008 we won the little league world series and my basketball team won second
place in the local recreational league. When it came to school I wanted nothing to
do with it. I spent my mornings in the class room waiting to go out to recess and
after recess I would sit in my desk and wait for school to be over so I could go to
practice. This attitude and that daily schedule stuck with me through highs cool and
would hold true today if I still played sports, but during my time in highshool and

comparing myself a dumb jock to smart kids or the average kids and it made
me start to think, How do high school athletes attendance, discipline, graduation
rate, GPA and most importantly the athletes ability to find jobs later in life compare
to the so called smart kids who do not play sports.

Attendance
Lets start with attendance. When I was in high school from 2012-15
attendance was a big problem. Kids were skipping class or leaving school to go get
lunch and not coming back. A lot of kids just would never show up but somehow
still move from grade to grade. In todays world it is getting harder and harder to
skip school because of all the technology the schools have to take attendance and
call your parents. For whatever reason athletes missed only half as many days of
school on average as non-athletes.(Whitley) Back in 1993-96 Roger L. Whitley, a
teacher in North Carolina, spent three years observing 285,805. Throughout her
three year study she even divided it into subgroups and found that even the worst
attendance of the athletic subgroups was almost two times better than the best
attendance of a non-athletic subgroup.

Dropout and graduation rate

Many people drop out of high school, or just decide they cant do it or dont
want to do it and just take their GED and move on with their life. A study was
conducted in Kansas from 2008-2009 on high school students comparing drop out
and graduation rates. Earlier studies showed that athletes drop out less than nonathletes, and this study agrees. This study found that non-athletes were 15 times

more likely to drop out. Angela Lumpkin also stated that athletes graduated at a
much higher rate. Female athletes graduated 8% higher average and males
graduated over 11% higher than their counterparts. (Lumpkin) Lumpkin, a professor
in the department of health and sports, and Judy favor, an assistant dean of the
school of Education and graduate of Studies at Baker University, conducted this
study after Kansas school board past rules creating minimums the athletes had to
meat in order to be eligible to play. Their study showed that the rules made a huge
impact on the overall Academic success in the state.

Discipline
Through my own personal experiences I would lean toward the fact that both
groups, athletes and non-athletes, have their own discipline problems. Both groups
have the kids that sit on their cell phone for an hour in the back of the class, both
groups have the disrespectful kids that mouth off to the teacher and the principles
and that never seem to know when to stop talking. And of course both groups have
the stoners. The pot smokers that spend their nights doing things other than
watching their favorite television show or worrying about next weeks exam. In an
online newspaper article an unknown writer for The National Federation of State
High School Association stated that teenagers that participated in any after school
activities was associated with a higher likelihood of moving past high school and on
to college, voting in national and regional elections, and more likely to volunteer for
religious and community groups according to a previous examination conducted by
NELS. Continuous participation in after school activities in eighth, tenth, and twelfth
grade showed greater effects than just participation. The results of the
examinations were held after accounting for control and individual, parent, peer,

and school process variables. (Zaff et al., 2003). This study shows that being on a
team or in any kind of group it makes kids better individuals inside and out of the
class room and most importantly it makes the kids more productive members in
their community, meaning they are more likely to create jobs for others or help
others in need.

GPA
When it comes down to it and until a person receives their college diploma
the students Grade point average (GPA) is the most important thing to that
student. Even thou when you get to the real world, as my teachers would call it,
you need more than just a good GPA but all high schools and universities care about
is what your final GPA is at either the end of the semester or at the end of the year.
Julia Forster, a graduate student, did her thesis paper on the topic of athletes GPA
compared to non-athletes and got different results then what some would expect.
Opposite of my previous opinion and other articles that I had read Julia studied an
experiment done by Maloney and McCormick in 1991 of college athletes at Clemson
University rather than high school athletes. The pairs study consisted of nearly
300,000 grades from undergraduates and 13,000 grades from athletes. Football
made up 28% of the sample. The average GPA of the athletes was 2.38 while the
average GPA of a non-athlete was 2.68. (Forster, 6) .3 points is quite a large amount
for differences in GPA, and that study would show that non-athletes are significantly
smarter, but not so fast. Forster then goes on to state that In opposition, certain

sports did perform significantly better than the average. Although this was a
useful first test, it did not take into account important variables that could have
affected the outcome. Another point that must be emphasized is that these results
dont necessarily imply causation, they simply imply correlation. While the study
does show that the college athletes had GPAs less than that of their counterparts
she also explains how the study that was conducted in 1991 was flawed and had a
lot of variables and circumstances to be weighed in on the final conclusion.
As I said in the begging I was part of the dumb jocks. I was told I wouldnt
be able to maintain the needed grade or keep up with the work being done in my
honors math class. I was told that I would be up long nights and have every little
free time in high school because sports would take my study time and my free time,
I was also told that high school sports may introduce me to the wrong group of kids.
My freshman year I played baseball, made the JV basketball team, the JV football
team and took two sophomore classes. I completed that year with a 3.3 GPA and
received and A in math. I was told my junior year would be the hardest year of my
high school career. By that point I had lost the love of basketball and had also quit
baseball because I dint like the coach, but needless to say I received a 2.9 that year.
By my senior year I had made friends with all the faculty and staff including the
baseball coach from sophomore year. I was known as the smartest kid on the
football team and was trusted by the principals when they needed help. My senior
year I finished with a 3.4 final GPA was the captain of the football team and was
nominated an all-state Linebacker. Without a doubt sports has made a huge impact
on who I have become. In high school I pushed myself to do my homework because
if I didnt I knew that I couldnt play Friday night. I was nice to everyone who
deserved my respect including all faculty members not only because thats how I

was raised but also because I knew coach would run my butt up and down the field
if I disrespected someone and because I had to set an example for the younger
players on the team. I believe high school athletes overall are better students and
do better in school simply because of their love for the game. They wake up every
day and study their books just so they can play in that next game.

Forster, Julia. Student-Athletes and Academic Success. Thesis. 2012. Print.

Lumpkin, Angela, and Judy Favor. "Comparing The Academic Performance Of High
School Athletes And

Non-Athletes In Kansas In 2008-2009." Journal Of Sport

Administration & Supervision 4.1 (2012):

41-62. SPORTDiscus with Full Text.

Web. 31 Mar. 2016.

"The Case for High School Activities." Www.nfhs.org. Web. 05 Apr. 2016.
Whitley, Roger L. "Those 'Dumb Jocks' Are At It Again: A Comparison Of The
Educational Performances

Of Athletes And Nonathletes In North Carolina High

Schools From 1993 Through 1996." The High School Journal 82.4 (1999): 223233. PsycINFO. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.

Zaugg, Holt. "Academic Comparison of Athletes and Non-Athletes in a Rural High

School." NASSP

Bulletin 82.599 (1998): 63-72. ERIC. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.