Extracurricular Activities and Sports

I realized that I am not going to be sleeping anytime soon with how hot it is in my room tonight even with the AC blaring and three fans doing work in my room. So, I decided to write another post since I've been slacking lately. I want to discuss Extracurricular Activities and Sports:

First I want to point out that kids that become deeply involved with a sport or some sort of activity like music are much less likely to find trouble as they grow up. This is because we'll use my sport as an example: running takes up so much time that there is little time left to have a social life so to speak. Now I know many people your age hate the sound of that and don't understand, but this is not a bad thing at all. I think a problem most teens have is they have too much spare/free time and don't have enough stimulating activities in their lives to keep them occupied which is why many find themselves doing things they really shouldn't.

At this age (young teens) however it seems like many people do try different extracurricular activities and sports especially as they are trying to figure out what they like and who they are. But come on, most people just do it for the social aspect and really don't give two shits about the sport they are partaking in. Look at middle school track for example, I guarantee most people that go out for track are only there to socialize because they realize it is a coed sport and think it's just a time where they can screw around and let their hormones run wild. But I guess they are at least during that short period after school doing something. However those kinds of kids are the ones that have too much time and also think they are really doing a sport hardcore and think they are awesome. Totally untrue, very few kids actually understand at this age what true participation in a sport really is and what it requires.

For example in high school multiple times a week I was doing two a day practices, both before and after school. And in any given day we could run up to close to 20 miles (including warmups and cool downs) if it was a distance day or on speed days do workouts like 8 repeat miles on an 7 minute cycle, 10 repeat kilometers (1,000 meters) on a 4 minute cycle, or even 20 repeat quarters (400 meters on the track) on a 2 minute cycle. With so much work there is little time let to socialize outside of your sport. But what I came to realize is, is that my sport was recreational. My friends in XC and track with me became my family and even outside of school and practice when I had some time to hangout it was usually with them while others were off doing "bad things." I dunno where I'm really going with this now since I'm getting really tired and my coherence is severely plummeting as I continue to type...

But what I'm trying to imply here is that kids should become involved with something and really invest time and effort into it, it will pay off. Studies show that kids that are deeply involved with a sport or something are much more likely to succeed later in life as they learn the skills of dedication and hard work. It also just simply keeps them out of trouble most of the time, due to the lack of free time if that makes sense. It just disallows kids like that to have the opportunity to make stupid decisions.