Dashira Mendez

English 110

Professor Rogal

March 16, 2020

            Over the years, sports have become important to many people’s lives and have had a major impact on them as well. To these people, there are no other things more important to them then the sport they love and would do anything for it. Sports can be very dangerous and have a bad impact on many lives which is why many people ask themselves Are sports really beneficial?Many say that Sports are beneficial because it helps us keep ourselves healthy, gives us opportunities and helps us relieve stress. However, others say that sports are not beneficial because of the many injuries, long schedules and poor self esteem.

            One of the many reasons why some people believe that sports are beneficial is they help us keep ourselves healthy. Sports require us to move our bodies which leads to  exercising(MarineAcademy.com). Exercising helps us stay healthy because as we move around, we lose calories and fat and this can lead to weight loss which can be good if you are overweight. Also, when we play sports we try to contain the least amount of calories while we eat and try our best to stay in shape by not eating a lot of junk food and drinking a lot of water. Playing sports also keeps us healthy emotionally, by fighting health conditions and potential health diseases(MarineAcademy.com) which can later play a role in people’s lives especially children.

            Another reason why some people believe that sports are beneficial is because they give us opportunities. Sports give us the opportunities of college scholarships. They help us get scholarships especially if you are not the best student. With your skills and knowledge in the sport you play, you can get free college rides that can change your life forever. These scholarships also help us become better versions of ourselves. Another opportunity that sports give us is working and meeting new people. Some sports, depending on whether you are on a team or not, require traveling especially to tournaments and in these tournaments you get to meet and work with new people and these people give you the opportunity to learn new things and also to just be around a different environment. Moreover, Another opportunity sports give us is improving our academic skills. When we play sports, us teens improve their academic skills because we know that if we don’t have a high GPA or good grades we won’t be able to play or be in any kind of sports because we are required to have good grades in order to be part of a sport. Lastly, another opportunity sports give us is managing our time correctly. When You play sports, you have to have a calendar or a schedule since you sometimes are very busy. Practices and games take up a lot of teens that play sports’ time because of the many things we have to do like school work and chores.

            The third and last reason why sports are beneficial is because they can help relieve stress. For many athletes, school can be very stressful so they find comfort and relief in sports.  Many of us use sports as some kind of “therapy” for our mind. When we play sports we only focus on the things that we are doing at the moment which can help to forget some things going on in our lives for a while. Also, for older people sports can be a way for them to relieve stress off of work or any family problems or personal problems they have going on. Relieving stress through sports can also be vey good for your mental health because you are not really paying attention to the things going on around you or giving much thought to the things going on in your life. This shows how sports can be very beneficial to us because they can help us with a lot of things in our daily lives and with our health as well.

            One of the many reasons why many people think sports are not beneficial is because of the many injuries we tend to get. Injuries like torn ligaments, sprains and strains and dislocated joints. Injuries like these can really have an impact in an athlete’s life and could change them forever. Some of the reasons why these types of injuries tend to happen are because we do not stretch enough, we do not practice the right way or lack of conditioning.  A sprain is a “stretch in the ligament, the band of connective tissues that joins the end of one bone with another”(Hand out on sports injuries). Some of the most common injuries in sports are torn achilles, torn ACL and fractured ankles. An achilles tendon injury comes from a tear to the tendon connecting the calf muscle to the back of the heel. An ACL injury comes from a tear or sprain in the anterior cruciate ligament which is one major ligament in the knee. A fractured ankle occurs when one or more bones in your ankle break. These bones are either the tibia, fibula, or talus. This type of injury can be caused by accidents, falls or high impact sports. All of these injuries and more are the reasons why many believe that sports are not really beneficial.

            Another reason why many do not find sports beneficial because of the long schedules involved when you are an athlete. These long schedules can cause a lot of stress and little to no type to spend with your family. When we play sports it is very stressful having to go to games, practice while still having a whole family or friends to spend time with. This can be very bad sometimes because you start distancing yourself with others and they think that they are doing something wrong which is why that person doesn’t want to hang out. Another reason why long schedules are not beneficial is because we don’t really have time to take care of ourselves. From going to practice everyday and having games three days a week and spending time with the people we love, we don’t really have time to really reflect on the things going around us and don’t have time to actually do the things that we really want to do apart from the sport we love to play. Lastly, long schedules can really cause us to miss important dates in the family like birthdays, mothers/fathers day and many more because again, we really do not have time or do not know how to manage the time we have and split it evenly between the things we like and want to do. This is another reason why some people believe that sports are not really beneficial to humans. 

The last reason why many believe that sports are not beneficial is because they can cause low self esteem. When we play sports we meet people who are more skilled than us at what we do which can cause low self esteem and cause us to bring ourselves down. Having a low self esteem while playing sports, can cause us to not want to play again because we think that “we are not good enough”, and that we are bad and talented which can then affect our emotional state. Having a low self esteem while playing sports can also lead us to being very competitive which can be very bad for the things we do later in the future because we’ll try to make everything a competition and can then lead to getting hurt.  Moreover, sports may cause low self esteem because some people may notice how they are very out of shape and that can cause them to really put themselves down and think that they are things they aren’t. This shows how sports can bring your self esteem down.

I personally think that sports are beneficial because it helps our health, teaches us leadership skills, gives us many opportunities and helps us in our daily lives. I’ve been playing sports since I was very young and have witnessed the positive things it has led not only me to but my family and friends as well. With this research, I learned many new benefits and disadvantages of playing sports but I still believe that sports are good and fun to play while still teaching us life lessons that we can later show people around us.

                                                Bibliography

1. “Handout on Health:Sports Injuries.” Permanent Access, 11 Jan. 2017, permanent.access.gpo.gov/gpo75987/Handout_on_Health_Sports_Injuries.pdf.
2. “7 Resons Teenagers Should Play Sports.” Marine Academy, 2020, www.mma-tx.org/blog/13308/7-good-reasons-teenagers-should-play-sports/.
3. “Benefits of Sports to Students.” University of Rochester, 2017, www.rochester.edu/team/benefits-of-sports-to-students/.