Should Competitive Sports Be Allowed In School?

To compete or not compete? Football, soccer, baseball, all competitive sports. There have been many controversies on whether competitive sports should be allowed in school. One side states that competitive sports teaches important skills such as sportsmanships, but on the other hand, others say that competitive sports causes anxiety at a young age. Competitive sports should be banned before it gets out of hand. First and foremost reason that competitive sports should be banned is that it can create fatal psychological disorders on kids. Article by Frank Smoll, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington states, sports anxiety is very common in sports participants as 20% of participants agree that they have some-sort of sports

Correspondingly, in the the article written by Adam Buckley Cohen, a New York Times journalist, stated, “And he recognized that if he kept taking hits year after year, he could suffer the same fate — or worse.” (Cohen, 1). The same fate as in developing mental diseases due to the reoccurring concussions. These developments are mostly known to occur on NFL veterans who have retired, but if sports keep pushing kids to work harder and to be more aggressive, kids may be developing it without us noticing already. Parents shouldn’t risk their kids’ future for sports when they 're not going to pursue it in the future. In the same token the article by Boston University that it ranked highly ranked in the medicine division also familiar with brain damage stated, “Nine-year NFL veteran, former Tampa Bay Buccaneer Tom McHale was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by head trauma, when he died in 2008 at the age of 45.” (Boston University, 1). McHale was the sixth case of known CTE on football players at the time, and CTE shows a similar symptoms to Alzheimer’s disease. Kids are put in danger every time they step on a football field to play. Is it reasonable to be a parent and just brush off the fact that every time they step on the field may be the last time that their child will remember everything due to the fact that they may develop CTE? Protect the future leaders from concussions, they deserve a better future. Paradoxically, study by U.S. Disease Control shows that 28% of football players ranging from age eight to fourteen will suffer from an injury. That is about one in three adolescent football player will suffer from an injury. That means that more than every 2 in 10 football player will most likely suffer from an injury. Should parents be fine with the fact that there is