In the days leading up to Theodore Roosevelt High School’s reopening on the 22nd of August, students, staff, and parents alike took notice of the major construction going underway. TRHS now features an expansive parking lot, a new gymnasium with a lobby to compliment it, a field house, turf for Roosevelt Stadium, and a variety of other additions. What these changes all have in common is their benefit toward TRHS athletics.
High Schools in the U.S. revolve tightly around sports culture. Football games are synonymous with the high school experience, and hundreds of students crowd together in the gym for boisterous pep rallies. To keep these core school activities running, high schools put in substantial effort and money. TRHS’ upgraded football stadium and new gymnasium exemplify the emphasis that high schools place on athletics. This leads to the tricky question over schools prioritize academics and athletics. “Academics are the primary goal of any school. We have pretty good rules in place that we follow from the state of Ohio [by] OHSAA [such as] rules about eligibility. That means you have to be passing classes,” says Ms. Swango, biology teacher and assistant varsity coach to the basketball team. “Athletics are a choice; you’re very lucky if you can play and make a team. I think the school should support the athletic teams, obviously.”
By nature, sports are more apparent and eye-catching. No one really knows what’s going on in a chemistry classroom except for the students in it, almost everyone knows when there’s going to be a football game. When excluding the attractive nature of high school sports, there is still a significant role that schools play in emphasizing athletics. Spirit weeks, pep rallies, and football stadium upgrades all demonstrate school pride in athletics. “I don’t see any hallway parades for kids that get 5’s on AP exams. I don’t see any kids getting really pumped up to know material. I think that’s a problem more with society because of how we idolize our sport heroes.” Essentially, the importance schools and students place on athletics are a result of a trickle-down effect from society’s glorification of sport, an issue entirely out of a school’s capacity to fix. “If you look at how much money the NCAA makes on March Madness, athletic prowess always takes priority, unfortunately. The only way kids make academics their priority, I think, has a lot to do with their family structure and/or the support system that they get at school, because, it’s not always parents that given them that support. It could be a teacher, a guidance counselor, or an admin.”
Such emphasis becomes a problem when it primarily benefits student athletes. Yes, it is not arguable that students who play sports in high school do better schoolwork and in gaining life skills. The classic list of benefits of high school sports: time management, team-building, perseverance, etc, truly do apply. Student athletes are more likely to stay in school, graduate, and attend college. The issue creeps in when high schools prioritize athletics, benefiting the select group of student athletes, and not the majority of other non-athlete students.
Regarding the academic and athletic programs at TRHS, Ms. Swango says, “I think they’re both equally strong. [In] teaching, we have a lot of oversight. You can’t be a bad teacher anymore these days. There’s just too much with evaluations and what you need to do in the demands of families and kids and state standards. I think that the majority of teachers in this building are amazing. I think that we are a very strong academic school if you take part in the academics.” TRHS does offer 14 AP courses. Yet to some students, the AP courses cut last spring were a let down on the part of the academic program. Senior and physics-lover Ellie Mercer was particularly impacted due to TRHS no longer offering AP Physics 2. “Not a lot of people were interested in AP Physics 2, yet it’s still disappointing that it was cut.” The dwindling numbers of students eager to take higher-level courses are a possible indication of a decrease in motivated and eager students. “Incentivize higher-level classes. They conflict with scheduling so students have to choose between lunch and an AP class. An easy fix would be to place required courses such as English in 4/5 or 6/7 periods so that AP classes won’t clash with lunch,” Ellie proposes. Junior Cash Liedel suggests that improving teacher pay would ease the shortage of higher-level courses. “Paying teachers more would ensure that classes could get taught”. In public schools, teachers’ pay is a reflection of a statewide problem, not TRHS, Liedel recognizes.
The auditorium renovation is a significant upgrade that benefits both the academics and athletics at TRHS. It received a complete makeover. This change was met with gratitude and relief. “I love the new auditorium. It’s about time. The chairs were 50 years old, the carpet was peeling, everything was falling apart.” Mercer, who is a member of of choir and the Drama club, says. “Some of the effort and money put into the auditorium could have been put into making teachers’ lives easier. But the auditorium is a net positive.” Students who don’t use the auditorium on a regular basis, like senior Abby Visker, appreciate the auditorium upgrade too. Visker says, “I like the reconfiguration of the theater”. When asked why, she simply said, “theaters are cool”.
So clearly, TRHS’ renovations benefit both the students class and facility. Yet athletics remain an embedded, and vital part of the high school sphere. “Everybody always says that we used to be stronger, but we were in a different league. When we made a switch to a power league, it really showed the weaknesses and I think that we’re doing a lot to take care of that,” says Swango when asked to describe TRHS’ athletic program. “We’re getting better facilities. Even as coaches, we make lessons. I know that they do scouting for almost all the sports to prep the kids. It’s almost an applicable branch of academics, where athletics is a natural arm of academics, where you perform kinesthetically.”
Altogether, academics and athletics are essential to a school’s atmosphere. TRHS does a good job of prioritizing both programs, because when the final bell rings, a high school is an institution of learning: academically and practically.