At St. Dominic, most of our students are a part of a sports team or an extracurricular activity. It may be hard for some students to balance their sport and also their school work. There are many strategies and solutions that can help you juggle these two things. Listed below are my five favorite strategies to balance sports and school. 

Firstly, utilize your empower hour time. Empower hour is very helpful for you if you want to get your homework done before practice. You can study with some friends, or head to the learning commons to knock out some homework. You get a whole hour out of your school day, so why not use it. Sophomore Bree Moore uses her Empower hour time wisely and gets her work done. 

 “Empower hour helps me with any of the work I didn’t get done the previous night, due to sports, also it can help me get the work I was assigned that day done, so I don’t have any work to do that night.” Moore said.

Second, put your school work first. While this may not seem like an important thing, it is. Most athletes don’t remember that you have to have good grades to be eligible to practice and to play, so you should always be putting your school work ahead of your sport because you can’t play if you don’t do your work. Make sure you’re always giving yourself enough time to complete your assignments.

Third, take a study hall. Study hall is one of the most helpful classes to take as a student-athlete. Say you are a multi-sport athlete, leaving from a school practice at 5 pm and having to be at a club practice at 6 pm. It is hard to keep up with your school work. A study hall provides the necessary time needed to focus and get your school work done. If you play a sport in the fall, then you should be taking a 1st semester study hall, and vice-versa for spring sports. 

Fourth, Be smart with your time. Time management is crucial when dealing with a short amount of time to do your homework. When you are given free time in class or time to work on the assignment, you should be working on your assignments instead of playing games or watching Netflix because you wont regret it when you don’t have homework after practice. Even when you’re at home you should be trying to get your work done so you don’t have to stay up late, because as athletes getting 8 plus hours of sleep is crucial for performing well at practice and games. Sophomore Grace Arrowood thinks using your free time is very important and works great for her.

“Also, just be smart with your time a lot of times it’s like tempting to you know, just like be on your phone or talk to somebody when you could be doing homework but you have to remember if you don’t do it and it doesn’t get done, your grade goes down and there goes your sport. So just be smart with your time.” Arrowood said

Lastly, Communicate with your teachers.You should always be in touch with your teachers. If you’re missing class for games or tournaments, you should be communicating with your teachers to see what you will need to do. Teachers are very understanding and will help you, all you have to do is go out of your way and talk to them for help. Ask them questions and communicate your schedule with them. Then they will tell you what you need to do and will always help you if you need it. 

Managing your school work and playing sports is always hard, as well as trying to balance a social life and a job. With these tips you can get your homework done faster so you have time for sports and also your social life and working a job.