If there's No Winners, We're all Losers!

Christina Grisanzio
October 27, 2007
Problem/Solution Essay
If There’s No Winners,
We’re All Losers!

I came from a school that encouraged after school competitive sports. My teammates and I would organize drills and games to help us prepare for upcoming basketball games and competitions. The morning announcements always mentioned the players and those students that didn’t play would attend the games to cheer us on. Many players even got together in the summer to keep our skills sharp. My old school is very small but we had one of the best girl’s basketball teams in our league. We were able to do this because we set goals and worked very hard. It felt awesome to win! Because the school only had 25 fifth graders, nearly every student was an important part of at least one team and most were part of two or more teams. (I was on the basketball, volleyball and track teams.) We had incredible school spirit and learned much more than the actual sport. We also stayed fit as sports started in third grade so by the fifth grade, we were used to working out as part of our regular schedule.

Here at McKelvie, we do not have competing sports teams and I find that some students are not used to challenging themselves and it shows in their commitment to doing well in their schoolwork. Others also do not exercise and have never been part of any sort of athletic training and may not be as healthy as they could be. More than half the kids in America are overweight and diseases that result from obesity and lack of exercise are on the rise. If all schools encouraged sports, I think the amount of overweight kids would drop and these kids would also be learning the other positive lessons of being part of a sports team.

One solution for McKelvie kids would be to suggest this problem to our class representative who could bring it up at the next Student Council meeting. If the Student Council did not accept the request for team sports, we could try to organize two teams that would compete in the field at recess.