High school taking “student athlete” to heart
September 5th, 2008 - byWhen a student-athlete tells me that their sport is their “life,” I usually take it with a grain of salt. But sometimes, kids do get so worked up with their sport that schooling kind of takes a back seat. To counteract this mania, Northshore High School in Louisiana is requiring all football players to take mandatory tutoring. From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:
This year, Northshore High is truly embracing the term “student athlete,” and putting the student’s academic responsibilities first. Coach Mike Bourg, varsity football coach, and Mary Wahden have decided to initiate an athlete tutoring program. The program is a mandatory weekly tutoring session for all football players, freshman and varsity alike.
Hats off to Northshore High. Football can be your “life” now, but if you don’t look at how important those grades and how much colleges look at your academics, football won’t be your “life” in the future.
Another good thing about this mandatory tutoring — most colleges require a certain amount of study hours for their freshman athletes. So come time for college, going to the mandated tutoring isn’t going to seem like that big of a deal because you’ve already been doing it for a few years.
The end of goal of college is getting a degree and forming a career. Northshore is taking steps to make sure that happens for its students.
