I highly doubt that you train for 4+ hours a day Mon-Sat all year round. I’m friends with nationally ranked rowers and they don’t train close to that much.
The swimmers practice as a team all year round 5 AM before school? The swimmers I know who have morning practice during the off season swim with clubs, which isn’t what I’m talking about.
The case at your school isn’t common whereas the statement I made, although a generalization, largely holds true for most high schools. The cross country kids at my school run all year round but it’s not legitimate team practices. In any case, the cross country runners at your school can only be single sport athletes?</p>
<p>Actually Jersey 13 Geography does play a role. At my school our water polo team is ranked 1st in the nation and have morning practices year round. During season it’s after school as well. Swimmers are usually part of both school and club and end up practicing over 2 hours a day at least.</p>
How has anything you just said supported the idea that the difficulty of a HS sport in general is dependent on geography? In regards to your last sentence, you just repeated what I’ve already stated, that swimmers swim for club teams in the off season, which I don’t consider when determining the difficulty of said sport in HS. Basketball, soccer and lacrosse players all usually play for club teams as well, should we consider the time spent with those club teams when determining how time-consuming it is to be apart of the HS team?</p>
<p>I’m in 5 AP’s this year. Well technically 4 AP’s and IB Euro History. It doesn’t seem too bad so far…
But since I’m also on the school newspaper and will need to stay until 7 or later on deadline nights, things could get interesting.</p>
<p>Jersey13 - you are correct that I don’t actually practice for that entire time, but because we have to bus to the river, which is about 30-45 minutes from my school, it does encompass that much time. Most high school crew programs in my area have a similar time, if not always practice time, commitment because of the necessity of travelling off campus to a practice venue, unlike other teams. This, in itself, makes crew a large time commitment.</p>
<p>Do you really believe a high school sport is not partially dependent on geography? That football in Texas will require more hours than football in Kansas? Same with swimming in Southern California.</p>
<p>Also Jersey13, I said “if you’re an athlete taking 4-5 APs…” so we’re talking about athletics in general, in which case club time would count.</p>
Where did I say that? Try actually reading my post. The only thing I said was that none of the examples you used to support your statement were relevant. </p>
<p>
In that case, those playing at the highest level of club soccer/lacrosse/basketball/hockey are definitely the athletes devoting the most time to their sport on average. I assumed you were talking about HS sports only, which is why I was disregarding club swimming.</p>
<p>This is why you can’t tell the smart from gifted, just because you take a lot of ECs doesn’t mean you’re smarter than someone only taking 1 EC each season.</p>
<ol>
<li>You could be only getting 5 hours of sleep</li>
<li>All your EC’s might not even match to the level of the OPs EC.</li>
<li>Sports are usually more time controlled that newspaper writing/most clubs, because you actually have to go to practices/games at set times. When you can write your newspaper when you have free time or on the weekend.</li>
</ol>
I am really excited!</p>