Prep sports: Rest vs. overall well-being

By Ed Piper

I would like to see it laid out in a medical journal how the new state law requiring high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. lends rest to adolescents who need extra sleep, versus overall well-being including participation in school sports that start during or right after last period.

Present situation: Experts tell us that developing teens need sleep between the hours of this-and-that, so they need to start their high school classes later than the old time at 7:30 a.m. or so.

It's not about getting more sleep; if that was the case, we'd just tell students to go to bed earlier after finishing homework and turning off their devices, so that they could sleep through the night.

No, the current argument, as I understand it, is that adolescents must rest during certain hours--not longer hours. I don't know if it has to do with biorhythms or what.

Okay, I get it. So, as a result some schools have prohibited team workouts before classes, cancelling out any benefit of the certain-hour theory. (Some, I understand, hold morning workouts; others don't. Two girls with wet hair walked into my first period class in Poway Unified School District; they had just had a cross country training session.)

Here is my present quandary: La Jolla's girls golf team has matches starting as early as 3:30 p.m. this fall. That means the six girls golfing that day have to leave either during last period, or before last period even starts.

They're either going to have to be good students, who can keep up with their work and make up for the presentations and lectures they miss in class. Or they're going to bomb out. CIF and school requirements insist on adequate academic performance. A girl can't just quit working in class because she's rushing to golf matches once or twice a week.

So, where does this rest-during-certain-hours vs. overall well-being (I'm in classes, I have to do well, it's stressing me out as I miss certain days in class) issue collide?

In homeroom and in morning announcements, a constant drumbeat is being kept up on "mental health": Take care of yourself. Keep balance in your life. Attend to your personal well-being. Take a break from studies to maintain a positive view. This started especially with COVID. COVID was, and is, wreaking havoc among young people, with its isolating qualities, school shutdowns, fear of getting COVID, and all the rest making the last two years extremely difficult.

Can you imagine growing up during the every-100-year pandemic? I never had to go through it at their age.

Homeroom presentations (I substitute-teach in two area districts) include tell someone if you need help; don't be a loner; reach out for support. There are many, many content presentations that students have received since they returned to classes later in 2020.

My point: In the next couple of years, as we assess what the school-start time change means for our children--8:30 a.m. start, after so many years at 7:05 a.m. (I subbed at Torrey Pines High in the 90's), 7:20 a.m., and so forth--how are we going to view the effects of the later start time in view of its impact on other aspects of student life?

A student having to miss last period regularly during their sport(s) season(s) is certainly going to be affected by missing class. Imagine if you have a senior class you have to take, and it is only offered last period? You're on a team whose matches start right at 3:30.

I wonder if we might begin to discuss moderating the influence of the 8:30 a.m. start time by meeting halfway, with an 8:15 start, 8 a.m., maybe somewhere in there.

Like I said at the top, how do we best address student mental health in the overall picture? As time goes on, the devastating effects of COVID will hopefully continually recede into the background as a lesser factor.

A lesser issue I didn't even touch on is the role of the student body in school sports. Shouldn't kids have the ability to attend athletic contests that their classmates are participating in? That becomes extremely difficult in view of the issues raised above. What is the point of a student body in the performance of the school's teams? We make a big deal out of how it is different playing a club sport (great coaching, no hanging out with one's classmates) vs. playing "for our school".