Double Impact: Interscholastic Athletics Advances Connections On the Field and Off

During a time of fiscal uncertainty, global competitiveness and a national health care crisis, perhaps one place for the United States of America (USA) to turn is to physical activity and the physical education classroom. Countless scientific studies have show that there is a positive association between physical activity and cognition as well as an association between physical activity and health (Warburton, Nicol & Bredin, 2006). 

However, despite what we know and what the research shows about the benefits of physical activity and education, only six states (Arkansas, Delaware, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah) provide funding for professional development for physical education teachers (Key State Physical Education Policies and Practices).  If states are not preparing physical education teachers, then who is providing the necessary instruction and education for individuals, particularly America's youth, to engage in healthy and active lifestyles? 

Now more than ever we need to reestablish the role and importance of the physical education profession and  interscholastic athletics.  To a degree, education and athletics have been disconnected by a number of different factors that include the proliferation of private organizations dedicated to the promotion and development of sports, an education system focused on a common core that does not include physical education and a division between physical education teachers and interscholastic sport coaches.  This disconnection between education and athletics has marginalized the impact of physical activity not only on intellectual and academic achievement but also on the 'pureness of the physical activity endeavor' that is athletics. 

Academics and athletics operating as competing opposites in their own distinct vacuums is not good for today's youth or for the nation as a whole.  When academics and athletics are brought back together and elevated to the position that they once held, a cultural existence that connected people in a community and neurons in an academic setting, then our nation will be in a better position to master our fiscal, global competitiveness and health care problems.