fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5838 ]

[ SECRET POST #5838 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5838 ⌋

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Is school sports really such a big thing in America as the movies make it out? Are all High Schools dependant on a sports team doing well, and do the kids all have to choose one sport to do after school? Do they just do the one sport all the time?

Is school sports really such a big thing in America as the movies make it out?

It varies. For the most part, probably not quite as big as movies make out, but still pretty important. And there are places where it really is that important - high school basketball in Indiana and the rest of the Midwest, high school football in Texas and the rest of the South.

do the kids all have to choose one sport to do after school? Do they just do the one sport all the time?

So each sport lasts for a season. You'll have football (American) or sometimes soccer in the fall; you'll have basketball in the winter; and you'll have baseball and softball in the spring. There are also other sports but those are sort of the big classic popular sports that everyone cares about.

And these are all mostly competitive teams. Kids can choose whether or not they want to try out for sports, and which sports they want to try out for. And if they try out, they might or might not make the team. If you're one of the best athletes in your year, you might play football, basketball and baseball. Or you might decide that you only care about football and not go out for any of the other sports. Or you might not play any sports at all. It all kinda just depends.

Extracurriculars are pretty much necessary for acceptance to a four-year college and for scholarships. Sports are not the only extracurricular but they are a common one.

At some high schools you can use playing on a team as a replacement for your gym class requirement.

So the movies exaggerate some but sports are important to some people.

movies aren't entirely wrong, though I feel like Buffy got it the most accurate. but no, students aren't required to pick a sport at all, and even any "extracurricular activity" requirement for graduating, college applications, etc, varies wildly by state and region, sometimes even by city within a state. our small city's local news covers high school sports (mostly football, baseball, and volleyball) as diligently as if it were professional, but then, we don't have any pro sports native to the city.

in some places, yeah, the football team doing well brings money to the school in the form of parent-donors and even local business sponsors. I never felt like it should be normal but it is and has been for a few decades.

Very much depends. In some (arguably most) areas, absolutely not and nobody gives a shit. In other areas, entire towns have cult-like sports culture and their HS football team is like pop stars. Maybe they have nothing else going for them?

The rest of us find those areas very weird fwiw

From a non-sport-heavy rural area, this. Like, we had a decent basketball and soccer team, but ehhhh, nobody cared and we sure didn't dedicate huge chunks of the school budget to them.

There is a reason why if you want to find a school on Google Earth you just look for the football field and baseball diamond. Just saying.

There are also things that are sports-adjacent. The Monstrous Bebe was never into sports, but she *loved* color guard, and while they had their own competitions and things, they also always did a halftime show (with the marching band) at all the high school football games, and marched in the Homecoming and Xmas day parades.

(And CG is open to boys as well as girls, which isn't always the case in extracurricular activities, and at least in the Bebe's HS, there was no bias toward 'only super skinny girls with long hair' as tends to be the case in a lot of things like dance and cheer.)

Color guard, if you don't know, is this, and this is a great example of an innovative and interesting routine: https://youtu.be/T6XIFntFrFk

Do children in America really play football at all? Like, not the soccer kind of football but the CTE kind of football? Because that seems dangerous, and a lawsuit magnet.

Yes, they definitely do. There are lots of teams out there for younger kids to join. My friend's son is nine and he's in one.

I think for younger kids it's usually non-tackle, and they do various other things to try and reduce CTE risk

There has also been a general decline in the number of kids who play football for just that reason

How do you play non tackle football? The game is a tackle based sport.

There's flag football. Players wear belts with flags, and the defense pulls at the flag to stop the offense.

I know I'm being a bit slow here, and I apologise for that, but could you expand a bit on how that works please? Because I for real don't understand how that works and I would like to.

NAYRT

You put on a belt. The belt has little bits of velcro on it. There's two flags on the belt that are basically just long strips of cloth that you attach to the belt using the little bits of velcro so it doesn't fall off. The defense tries to grab the strip of cloth and pull it off the belt, and if they get the cloth off the belt successfully, then the player is down.

Oh, I got you now. So it is more like a game of tag?

In Australia we have the same sort of thing with our football and call it touch footy. So, yes, but with extra rules and a ball.

There's Pop Warner - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_Warner_Little_Scholars

I think you're gonna get a whole lotta different answers because it really depends. At my high school, sports weren't a big thing. Kids played them obviously, either because they genuinely enjoyed the sport or because they needed an extracurricular to get into college or both, but there wasn't any favoritism from teachers/staff. The only team that won any trophies when I was there was the cheerleading team and aside from a, "Hey, good job, you guys", nobody gave a shit. Everybody who was able to had to play sports during PE (soccer, football, and field hockey are the main ones I remember), but not everybody joined a team after school.

This was my school too. We had sports teams but not everyone joined them - the only people who did were the people who were really into sports. Everyone else just did regular PE.

All the explanations here are good. But also keep in mind that there are 50 states with 50 educational systems plus private schools and magnet schools and charter schools means that no matter what we say some kind of bullshit is true somewhere.

I mean, people paid money to get their kids schooled by Kanye.

Yeah. Or stuff like those high schools that people transfer to specifically because they are going to be highly-paid professional athletes and the schools specialize in training athletes

To be fair, those types of schools are exclusive to the US. I know that Austria has skil schools for kids that serve the same purpose.

Like everyone else says, it depends.

Thought I'd chime in with my experience. I went to a HUGE public high school (graduating class had 1001 kids). We had three campuses, two for 9-10 grades and one with around 10 buildings for 11-12. Each campus had it's own football field. While I was on the Senior campus, the school spent a fuck ton of money to make a new football field. We were the worst football team in the league.

We also had a tennis court and a baseball diamond. The only time I saw the baseball diamond was when we were evacuated there due to a bomb threat.

it operates like religion both on variance of intensity and variance of religion in general. for places where it is intense, it can be quite startling how much your social life revolves around it even involuntarily. while everyone has a choice in those places to play or not play, sports has a social cache that nothing besides wealth can replace. some students do multiple sports if they're good and they want an easier collegiate life, a lot of people don't do even one, because unlike religion this requires some skill. most schools however do require PE. for places where it isn't intense, no one cares.

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[ SECRET POST #5838 ]

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