Our culture is obsessed with sports. Whether it be advertisements on television or kids playing soccer in their backyard, athletics are a fundamental part of our society. This means for public school systems, however, that many other extracurricular activities are forgotten in the craze, leaving students unaware or disinterested in their existence.

Sports overshadow extracurricular activities in many ways, especially monetarily. According to the Sports Facilities Advisory, youth sports related travel is an almost $7 billion industry. Arrowhead Union High School in Hartland Wisconsin also managed to expend $662,000 on a single locker room for their men and women’s basketball teams. Compare this to any other extracurricular activity. When is the last time a high school devoted hundreds of thousands of dollars on a room for a club they sponsored? What else compels parents, coaches and schools to pour billions of dollars into travel?

Unfair spending isn’t the only way athletics are overemphasized. Other extracurricular activities help boost an applicant’s college resume; however, they receive no equivalent to athletic scholarships, despite the fact that other activities may do more to contribute to their communities and develop the student as an individual. Athletic scholarships also create a sense of unwarranted expectation amongst highly-achieving athletes, as very few people actually receive these scholarships, and even if they do, there’s no guarantee they’ll be a significant amount. In fact, the New York Times in 2008 found the average athletic scholarship to be around $10,409. Students may spend more time worrying about these scholarships when they could receive more attainable academic scholarships. Colleges, too, are responsible in forming an ignorance of other extracurriculars to the detriment of students and their high schools.

However, external factors aren’t solely at fault. At WHS, the idea of being involved and taking pride in our school is (and I have done this myself) automatically associated with athletics, whether it be attending the next game or participating in it. The unfortunate result of this is the neglect over other extracurricular activities. As a student, I have noticed that many student athletes spend an enormous amount of time for their sport, often regarding other interests and activities as secondary, and non-athletes as “nerdy”.

Those involved with the education system (whether it be students, teachers or administrators) possess a limited amount of resources and time, nearly all of which can be hoarded by sports. All extracurricular activities deserve fair treatment, which means taking athletics off of its pedestal by evening out funding where it isn’t already and devoting less attention and social status to them.