<p>I'm currently a freshman, and I'm on my school's track team. I'm JV this year, but I'm getting pretty close to varsity times and am fairly confident I'll be varsity by sophomore or junior year. I'm not an absolutely extraodinary athlete, but I'm pretty good at what I do and, being still in my freshman year, know I can keep improving. Besides, I like track!</p>
<p>My English teacher really wants me to join Academic Decathlon in my junior year. If I do so, I'll take it sophomore year as a zero period and in my junior year drop track (scheduling issues) and join it, and most likely get on the team. </p>
<p>If I keep track, I'll just not do Academic Decathlon at all and join speech and debate zero period instead.</p>
<p>I'm currently a straight A student and am taking two APs, and plan to take two to three APs every year. My dream university is Columbia.</p>
<p>What do you think is best for me?</p>
<p>I think the second option is a good one, but whichever one you truly want to do.</p>
<p>Hmmm… can you not talk to your track coach? I can’t take athletics (weight room) for two periods, and I miss practices for math team, debate team, and science olympiad. The coach still allows me to run track and be on the team. (Btw I’m varsity and my 200m/400m/800m times are 24.3/53.5/2:10, so its not like he allows me to miss because I’m not an important part of the team)</p>
<p>What I hear is that you like track (and it’s good exercise for you). But your English teacher wants you to do something different. What is best is what you want to do, not what your English teacher wants you to do. Also, I don’t see why decathalon is necessarily any better than debate. I’d be thrilled if my daughter’s school had a debate team. </p>
<p>I can technically do track afterschool (7th period), but because the people who have it seventh period have missed half an hour every day, they tend to be slower.</p>
<p>Speech and debate at our school isn’t terrible; rather, we actually win at competitions! But it’s acadeca that’s treated as a very “official” acedemic extracurricular, and this year the team actually qualified to go to state. As far as I know, our debate team hasn’t done any competitions beyond school against school in our city. </p>