Why do students have to waste their time at school on gym classes if they are already doing a sport outside of school? Students who do a varsity sport or any highly intense sport outside of school should not have to do PE to lower the risk of overuse injuries and open up spaces in schedules for other classes.  

    Doing gym, if you don’t do any sport outside of school, is important because it gives you some physical activity throughout the week. “17% of youth ages 10 to 17 had obesity,” says The State of Childhood obesity. Physical education can help reduce the likelihood of obesity in youth.  “In 2017, only 26.1% of High School students participated in at least 60 minutes of physical activity,” wrote The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. But gym class makes sure that students are getting in and hour of physical activity.

     Although gym benefits students who don’t do gym, it can be detrimental to students who do an intense sport outside of school. Doing gym on top of another sport can add to the problem of overuse injuries. “Overuse injuries are responsible for nearly half of all sports injuries in middle and high school students,” reports UC Davis Health. For students who do a time consuming sport outside of school, it is not necessary to do gym. They are already getting physical activity, so gym wouldn’t benefit them. Also, those students could take other classes that may be more useful to them than gym.

     Gym class takes up a period in students’ schedule where they could be taking a class that they actually care about – a class that is going to help them get into a better college, or just grow their knowledge of the subject in general. Students who do sports outside of school could then take more classes that will be more useful than gym.

     Gym class is useful to students who don’t do physical activity outside of school. But students who do varsity or intense sports outside of school should be excused from gym class.