For the common teenager, sports are a major part of life. If students are spending time at practices and games, when do they have time to finish all of their school work?

Grade expectations for athletes should have a lower standard because of issues with time management and the dedication that comes with any sport. Teachers should go easier on the workload when these athletes have games or let them turn in the common homework assignment late.

Sports from the fall, winter and spring all have practices before or after school for almost three hours. This does not include team dinners, bonding time and mandatory meetings that take up a lot of time as well.

With the workload that high school students have these days, many students that don’t even play sports are struggling to complete everything.

So what are student-athletes supposed to do? Get no sleep, quit sports or skip school work? None of the above.

Teachers need to cut their student athletes some slack, by either giving them less homework on the day that they have a game or when they have something mandatory for that sport.

Coaches encourage their athletes to get a lot of sleep for the next day or to keep working on skills outside of practice, and then teachers ask their students to study more, give them more homework or stay after school. The trick for student-athletes is to find the balance between it all.

Junior Erica Johnson, an IB Diploma Candidate, member of the Atoms Marching Band and Swim Team while also working part time at Wakefield Rec Center, just doesn’t see the time to complete everything.

“Balance is hard when you’re trying to excel in all of the things you do, there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything you want to get done completed,” Johnson said.

There’s a triangle of the S’s; school, sports and sleep. The perfect student has an equal balance of the three S’s, but what actual student has that? In reality, a student can only pick two out of the three in order to do them thoroughly and thoughtfully.

For example, students that are in the marching band have practice every day for four hours and competitions all day Saturday. Many of the students in marching band are trying to complete the IB Diploma and get into a good college, but there is no time to finish all of their homework.

“Students are under a lot of stress and we have do much to do between sports and school and work and there just isn’t the time to do everything,”Johnson said.

For IB Diploma candidates, many are forced out of sports because of the homework load, the students don’t have time for sports. Some IB students can come home with five to six hours of homework.

For the college search, many student-athletes are given scholarships to attend a university just because they are incredible at the sport they do. People might think that scholarships that are given to student-athletes with lower GPA’s than non athletes is unfair, but the students that are getting the higher GPA without any sports are working less than the well- rounded student.

Besides, student-athletes not only learn and have great responsibility from team  experiences, they also learn how to have better social skills and manners since coaches do raise their teams to a higher standard than any other club or activity in the school.

Many people characterize a student-athlete as the “dumb jock” stereotype. But actually that’s quite the opposite. The national average high school GPA for athletes was 2.99 and 3.31 for non-athletes, which is not a huge difference considering athletes don’t have as much time for school work as the other kids. The national average college graduation rate was 34.2 percent whereas non-athletes average around 46.8 percent. Again, not a major difference with everything that athletes have on their plate.

Some people might disagree, saying that the students knew what they were putting themselves through, and if they didn’t know how to manage their time, then they shouldn’t have done the sport. Students do sports because they love to be a part of a team or play with a passion. But if they can’t do what they love, where are they going to find their passion to do schoolwork?

Athletes are not allowed to “get away with murder” either when it comes to grades. Fairfax County has a rule set in place where athletes are not allowed to be failing more than 2 classes to be able to play a sport. In addition, students with 3.5 or higher GPA’s get recognition for their achievements academically. Even if it is mainly only freshmen and sophomores considering they aren’t in the full IB program and IB classes yet.

The vicious cycle never ends because to play a sport students are required to get good grades, but these students don’t have enough time to earn the good grades.

Therefore, with everything that the student athlete has going on in their life, teachers of all subjects, IB or not, should be more lenient towards the athlete and give them a break.