Equality Across Sports
Everyone loves to attend football games and cheer on the Mavs, but they rarely ever come to cheer on other sports. You might be thinking, which sports don’t get a lot of love? Well, there is one sport in particular that needs more support from students: swimming.
Both Middle and Upper School swimming teams were at the top of the podium for the 2021 Private School Winter Showcase, hosted by Westfield High School. The teams defeated harsh opponents including Awty and Kinkaid. They achieved high scores that were calculated by adding up individual scores and combining them to a final team score. The Upper School girls got a 104 and the boys got a 77 on the leaderboard. In the most important middle school competition of the year, the HJPC swim competition, girls swimming and boys swimming won. Even though the St. John’s program doesn’t have a pool or the necessary equipment, they still pull through and win year after year.
All of these victories are from a sport very different from football. Unlike our football team, which has not defeated Kinkaid in 11 years, the swimmers won in HJPC and SPC. Despite their consistent performance, SJS swimmers still don’t have their own pool, meaning that they have to swim at Chancellors, a nearby pool. Having a school pool would be very helpful due to the fact that middle school swimmers have to drive a long way to and from practice. Having to travel many miles every day takes away time from valuable practice for the team, and limits the study time that the students can have after school.
In addition to playing sports, getting sports scholarships are an important factor for athletes. Sports scholarships are tricky to get with only about two percent of high school seniors winning sports scholarships every year at NCAA. Mens’ sports including baseball, soccer, diving, swimming, golf, tennis and track and field obtain more athletic scholarships than football. Yet still, most of our resources go into football.
We need to show support for sports aside from football. So many people spend their Friday nights at football games but rarely come to swim meets or soccer games. Don’t get me wrong, I love football games, but I just wish that people would come and support athletes in different sports.
“All sports should be treated on the basis of equality,” said Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics.
Everyone is impacted when people support something they do. Imagine being the best at a sport but no one ever acknowledges it. Tough, right? That’s why we need equality in sports.
Even if they don’t have much appreciation for the sport, I would love to see people congratulating others, coming to see them play, and cheering them on.