What is high school without painted faces and themed games, paired with hoarse voices and beaming school spirit? A dream.

The title of this article is nothing but a far-off figment of imagination in the eyes of many magnet school students across the nation. With little to no team sports offered by these public institutions, bright, talented, and potential athletes lose more than a varsity jacket and high school cliché when they don't participate in such programs. Whether participation consists of playing, managing, or watching; traditional high school sports such as football, basketball, volleyball, soccer and softball play a critical role in the development and growth in students of multiple backgrounds, social classes, and career interests. Magnet schools that credit the focus of fine arts, health sciences, or engineering to the lack thereof limit their students to the positive experiences and benefits that team sports have to offer.

Team work, adaptability, leadership, and discipline; these basic attributes of team sports are often lost in the midst of magnet schools. Due to its altered curriculum, many mediums of expression such as band, graphic design work, and dance ultimately become stressors instead of outlets. This competitive pool of constant auditions and exams do not build teamwork, but create underlying tensions in many productions and class groups that translate to unresolved issues and broken relations. At such essential and impressionable ages, high school students need healthy alternatives that are completely separate of the curriculum, in order to not only relieve stress, but also construct permanent solutions for temporary problems. Problems include difficulty working with multiple types of people, social anxieties, self-esteem, and overall attitude. Unlike individual, or mostly self-growth, sports such as swimming and golf, interactive team sports instill the importance of commitment to the whole team, attention to the skills of each player, and the ability to push everyone to their own degree of success to achieve a goal larger than the team itself. Even standing witness in the stands to your own school’s games and scrimmages can be beneficial; sportsmanship, social etiquette, and pride are key factors to the reputation of the student body as a whole, and the school as well. These contributions will ultimately lead to the prosperity of the team, the athlete, the student, and the person.

The effects of team unity through athletics go beyond high school and its curriculum, and although many magnet schools are beginning to allow the introduction of sports such as tennis and track and field, we cannot stop there. We can no longer deny the right of every student to be able to excel in every aspect of high school, to be able to receive accolade and awards in every endeavor available, and to be able to learn characteristics and abilities that will allow for a transition into society as a better citizen. It falls on the shoulders of public education institutions to establish programs that allow for such a change.

We can become this change, we can push for these opportunities, and only we can offer what was not given to us, to those that come after. Support your local petitions and bills that allow for the establishment of more team sports for magnet schools across America. Give opportunities to our talented athletes and scholars that are also artists and musicians. Give every teen student the full high school experience.