By Jackson Meeker

Should Mount Vernon High School sports count as a Physical Education (PE) Credit?  The answer is yes, they absolutely should. For the simple reason that their time could be more beneficial things.

Athletes taking PE in the same semester as their sport are being forced to work out twice a day.  Practically all of the sports offered here have practices that run at least an hour and a half to two hours long and sometimes longer.  This means that the average practice is longer than a single period of block day PE, and athletes have that 5-6 times a week. The argument saying we need it for the physical activity isn’t a valid one, as practice after school is equally exerting if not more so.

By requiring student-athletes to take a PE class the school is robbing us of academic opportunities. If PE were not required it would give us another period to pick up another class,  as some students’ schedules don’t have room to take the classes we want. This would also benefit students not in a sport as it would free up an abundance of space in these classes for students who need the class, and allow for them to arrange their schedule based on the electives we want rather than having to squeeze in a PE class.

Another potential use is to take a free period.  A free period would be useful for several reasons, a big one being that it would give us student-athletes more time to use for school work.  Since we have to spend hours every day after school at our sports practice, a free hour would be so beneficial. It would be especially to us on days of competition, as many times we don’t get back to the high school until 10 p.m or later.  We could also use this period to rest and prepare for their taxing after-school activity. Which would help perform at practice and at their competition.

For these reasons, I propose that Mount Vernon High School exempt us students in extracurricular sports from taking a PE class.  It would allow for students to be more academically active, successful, and make better use of their time. Whether a student chooses to take another class or spend their time in ways we feel benefit us best allowing for sports to be used as credits would be extremely beneficial to student-athletes.