JOSH HERMANSTORFER and ANNA VAIRMA –

CV Student Media –  

We’ve all heard the phrase before. Student athlete. Student is supposed to come first, but often times high school athletes are required to leave school early in order to get to their game on time. With sporting events occurring right after school, students are forced to be released early from their fourth period classes.

Many students consider those who leave class early lucky, but that isn’t always the case. “Right now I have math [4th period] and it varies when I do get released from school. Some days it is just an easy day and I can just take home a paper and be done at home,” said Zachary Wilson ‘18. “But on other days it is a lot harder because I don’t understand what we are doing the next day and we’ll be continuing on a problem…we’ll do a big problem and it takes a couple of days. If I am missing two days out of the week of that problem, then it does get hard sometimes.”

Student athletes are expected to leave early to make it to the game on time, causing them to miss a lot of class throughout their sport season. Some students believe that they leave class too early and would rather stay in class than leave early and fall behind. “I don’t think it is necessary to get released that early, because most of the time when I get released at 2:20 I don’t really find the need to leave at 2:20…we probably could leave after school and still get to the game on time,” said Wilson.

Making up work is not an easy task to complete, especially when it needs to be done multiple times a week. “By leaving my fourth hour early all the time I have to make more of an effort to get my work turned in so I don’t have any missing assignments,” said Bria Stalker ‘18. “I sometimes struggle with missing concepts in class because I’m missing more than other students.”

Although there are many students against leaving class early, a number of teachers support student athletes. “I was an athlete and so I totally appreciate the fact that they’ve committed to team sports so I’m very supportive,” said Spanish teacher Carol Godfrey. “One of the good things about high school athletes is that they learn time management skills which will serve them well in college.”

There are benefits and disadvantages to leaving early from class. If athletes are willing to make up the work and stay ahead in class, it shouldn’t be a problem. “If the student wants to leave it is the student’s choice and if they want to leave they gotta make up the work themselves. It’s all on them. It’s high school, not elementary school anymore,” said Wilson. “These activities they want to do, so let them do it and if they can’t keep up their school work then they should be held in, but if they can then there’s no reason not to [be released early].”

Leaving class early can be fun, but doing it too much can take a toll. “I’m going to be honest, I actually like getting out of class early,” said Stalker. “Although, in the long run I regret it a lot because it hurts my grades and I don’t end up doing as well on tests compared to everyone else,”