For Lafayette athletes, the grind never stops. They are practicing everyday, sometimes even on the weekends, but are they practicing too late at night? LHS Varsity athletes spend almost three hours a day practicing after school, and JV goes even later. In my opinion LHS sports are running practices too late at night and this is effecting students’ performance in and out of school.

One of the sports that practices too late is JV baseball with practice times from 6pm to 8pm at night. Since the practice times are that late, the students are not able to get enough sleep or get their school work done. This can affect the students’ performance when it comes to the game or just paying attention in school and doing well.

Lafayette senior Aaron Adam a previous JV player thinks that “during freshman year practicing till 8pm or sometimes even later is way to long for someone to be practicing who is just starting highschool”. I completely agree with Aaron Adam because I played JV baseball and had these same problems and complaints about the times. Another athlete, Nick Rizk agrees with the practice times being too late saying “these practice times were terrible” he continues “there was barely anytime to do homework at all”. These statements about baseball are true and part of the many reasons why LHS sports should end earlier in the night.

Another sport that the students are being affected by is Lafayette lacrosse. These players have one of the latest practice times out of all of the sports. They practice from 7:30 to 8:30 every night which is crazy thinking most players probably get home at 9 o’clock. They come in to school every day tired from the last night and unable to learn and pay attention as well as they could. This is unacceptable for Lafayette athletics because we support our player’s safety above everything else and with people not getting enough sleep and being overworked it shows that we are not doing a very good job.

Junior lacrosse player, James Stephens, thinks that the times of practice are crazy. That time could be spent with the players’ families and doing school work. Personally, I agree with him; time not in school, especially at night, should be spent with family and friends, not out practicing. These practices should be moved up due to the amount of sleep needed and the inability to get all of their schoolwork done. The final sport that is practicing to late is soccer even though they are 3-5 o’clock it is still a bad time for practice leaving them only a certain amount of time for homework and other daily activities. It is bad because it leaves them not much time at all to get homework done especially the juniors and seniors in AP classes that get 2-3 hours of homework at night. This leaves them little time to study or do the work that night or it means they are staying up

super late to get the work done. Another bad thing about soccer is their games they get home at 10 or 11 o’clock at night when they have their away games. Which is unacceptable thinking that they are going to be able to get all of their work done and get sleep. Dylan Zilla, a junior soccer player, says “It’s annoying getting home at about 11 o’clock after games during the week it leaves me no time to get anything done”. This is so true thinking that someone in college level classes is going to be able to get the work they need done when getting home at 11 o’clock. Not even talking about the project they have to do that can take up to 3-4 hours.

Lafayette sports are going too far having these students

practice and play this late at night. Thinking that they are going to be able to do the work and get the right amount of sleep in that time period is not ok. This is why I am writing to get a change in times to support the students having to suffer these late nights.