Gage Miskimen @GageMisky [Co Executive Newspaper Editor]

With the constant elevation of athletic talent in high school sports, there is more pressure for teenage athletes to succeed in their sports. The pressure comes from everywhere around them. Their parents, their teammates, their coaches, and the media. One wrong mistake and a whole article can come out about how poor a team is performing. Sometimes it’s basic news and it’s okay. Other times, it crosses a line. It gets personal and opinionated to the extent that it is not okay.

High school athletics aren’t necessarily about wins and losses. Sure, everyone loves to win and hates to lose, but that’s not the reason and the original idea of having high school athletics. High school is a time for growing and learning and athletics in high school come along with these lessons. A sports team in high school these days spend most of the year together conditioning and lifting in the offseason and that’s including most of the summer. They spend countless hours bonding together. Whether that be just working out, hanging outside of sports, having inside jokes or even fighting with one another. The brotherhoods and sisterhoods of sports should mean more than the sport itself. People should realize that. We as high school athletes are not professionals. We are kids. Athletes will make mistakes and hopefully will learn from them. A football may fumble, a basketball player may miss some shots, a bowler may throw it into the gutter, but it’s not the end of the world. Like Rocky Balboa said to his son in the latest movie, “It’s not about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep getting back up.” That’s what high school athletics are really about. Not records, not stats, not wins or losses. It’s about learning life lessons and forming close relationships with teammates and coaches and inspiring younger kids who come and watch the games to be a role model as well. It’s all a pattern and if we don’t set a better example, then the next generation of kids to play sports at the high school level will have even more pressure on them. Some pressure is good of course. That’s what competition is about. But kids need to still be kids and just play the games they love.